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After browsing through some ot the topics on this forum, a big question mark appeared in my head, which at best can be put down with the following questions:

1. How important is earning money and making profits for OSE? 2. Is the GVCS meant to be a tool to become rich or at least financially comfortable? 3. What weight does have profit generation in the decision making within the OSE project?4. Is money and profit a short and mid term means to achieve freedom from it, or is it a long term and final goal of OSE?5. Is there already an "official" position to this topic published by the creators or leaders of OSE?

I'd like to get this answered before I start to invest time and effort into OSE.

>>>Marcin has recently come around to the realization that a project needs to prove its own utility. Going forward it looks like he will be focusing on demonstrating that the GVCS can turn a profit on its own merits rather than require constant injections of free resources from outside. I agree with that approach. Hardware is inherently expensive. Even experimenting to improve it is expensive. The money has to come from somewhere and the only sustainable strategy is to use the activity itself to generate that money, IE: turn a profit.

2. Is the GVCS meant to be a tool to become rich or at least financially comfortable?

>>>Is your emphasis on the word "meant?" Marcin seems pretty clear on his intention being the opposite of acquiring a lot of money. However, the point of the GVCS is to REDUCE the NEED for money. Comfort has nothing to do with how much money you have; it depends on whether or not your needs are met. If you can meet your needs on your own, then you are comfortable. The core idea of the GVCS is to shrink the infrastructure required to sustain a modern civilization down the the absolute minimum so that small groups can be self-sufficient and therefore free to do as they please (more or less). That rend result could be defined as "rich" or "comfortable" depending on your point of view.

3. What weight does have profit generation in the decision making within the OSE project?

>>>It should be pretty important. What they're trying to do is live off of their own efforts, which requires a profit. The GVCS isn't supposed to be a hobby.

4. Is money and profit a short and mid term means to achieve freedom from it, or is it a long term and final goal of OSE?

>>>Not sure what this question is asking.

5. Is there already an "official" position to this topic published by the creators or leaders of OSE?

>>>Sort of. Marcin has scattered his evolving thoughts all over the wiki. And his thoughts continue to evolve. I don't think there is anything "official" about anything anybody except Marcin does.

In real capitalism you have control of speculation (monopoly, price fixing). That means, the money you get from your work are enough to buy the things you work at. Say you work in a car making factory, then you can buy a car in a decent time. That means, your salary is good enough and the price of the car is not artificially inflated.The problem with proprietary machines is that the producers refuse to sell parts or they sell parts at inflated price and only for a while, until the product is discontinued. That's a form of speculation. Instead of buying just a component for your refrigerator, you have to buy a new refrigerator because you can't find the part to replace.

Open source hardware in general, and OSE in particular, will make our world truly capitalist. Even if your life is good and you are happy with the current capitalist system, still you have to realize that we have to make some steps forward in order to get to real capitalism.

You will buy open source machines, you will be able to replace parts at decent prices, that means there will be less speculation, that will reduce waste and will improve recycling.Those who will produce machines and parts will make them for profit, of course. Marcin declared that OSE will sell machines for profit:

Thank you for your input, Matt and gonzo. Sorry for the long text below, but I get the impression I need to express my concern in a bit more detail.

I think, I understand what the GVCS is about. The mindset behind seems to be, to allow people or groups the access to technology which is right now out of reach for them because of their cost or artificial complexity.

I was intrigued by the concept, when I learned about it I believe 3 years ago, because I took it that way, that it is an offer to the broad public to allow to escape from today's industrial oligopols, to actually provide the means to build a village on low budgets. Low budgets means low debts or ideally no debt at all, and if the infrastructure of a village or a town can be build and provided for without any debt the people who own this infrastructure and the land its build upon are set free. Eventually, this would open up the possibility to go back to a subsistence economy without any need for money (read Tony Waters on this, as well as Bob Blain or J.W. Smith), which is the true alternative to a capitalistic economy (till today most people think the antagonist of capitalism is communism, what is totally wrong, since communism is capitalism just with a different governance and power structure). So, in the end, GVCS could be a tool to revolutionize society with breaking the power of the global plutocracy by taking away their means to control society: debt. I am wondering, if this is (part of) the motivation behind GVCS and OSE.

It is obvious, that OSE needs money to do what it is aiming for. Our world is constructed that way now, you can't put ideas to reality anymore without money. And big ideas require lots of money. So to be successful, OSE needs to earn money with its services and products. That's okay, but that is also the point where it is endangered to get assimilated by the system, if there is not a strong believe system counterparting the sweet temptations of possible wealth.

That's the reason for my questions. Is Marcin and his team promoting a geniously operating marketing scheme to lure people into helping them to achieve industrial success, to become a global industrial tycoon replacing other (unflexible and outdated) global industrial tycoons with cheaper, less complex and probably even better alternatives to their machines? Or are they genuinly out to help man, to help society, in the first place?

The open source part of the concept indicates that they are driven by some truly altruistic motivations. But I now read about production capacity, 7-figure budgets or globalized simultanious engineering efforts. I see charts with directorates and hierarchies, I see job offers and visitation slots you need to pay for. This is probably the only way OSE can achieve its goals in today's money fueled and driven world, but could it be, that this was in fact the goal from the beginning? Is Marcin a spiritual guru, a capitalistic industrialist, or an altruistic savior?

Despite everything, I'm very interested in GVCS and will use it for my project to build a city for tenthousand people which will live in a subsistence economy without money (more about this later this year on this board, since this is open source as well). I'm only wondering, if I will be collaborating with someone dreaming of material wealth after all, or if OSE and its community could be a like-minded partner in this effort. It is fine when there is a statement, and the answers above seem to indicate such, that OSE is not altruistic at all and in the end meant to provide a means of income to people. I just would like to know, if there is more than that.

Communism was not applied anywhere in the world. In true communism, the people own the land and the production facilities. All the "communist" countries in the world implemented state tyranny where the government owned everything and people were working as slaves for the government. Also, in true democratic capitalism you don't have oligarchy and plutocracy, because there is control of speculation, therefore they can't get rich at the expense of others. Sure, our "capitalist" states are much better than the (ex-) "communist" states. But we are not living in true capitalism. We just call our systems "capitalist" just as those terrorist (nomenclature) called their countries "communist". If you really apply communism or capitalism, the result will be very similar communities - everyone can get access to resources and to a life in dignity. The problem is not with communism but with the criminals who terrorize and enslave the people in the name of communism. The same with capitalism.

It is possible to live without money but that's very far away. Until we get there, we should better focus on going forward and on making the next steps. We can live without money but only when everyone can trust everyone else. You have to measure somehow the work of the people, you can't expect that some people work for free for others. If you work 16 hours / day to make your own house, why would you share it with me if I'm lazy and working only 2 hours, I dance, drink and make fun of you while you work? If you produce potatoes, you won't be happy to carry around 2 tons of potatoes trying to find a shop where they want it in exchange for the TV you desire. Money are the best currency at this moment because they are universal and easy to carry around. There are people who try to believe that "money are evil" (like The Venus Project (TVP) - Zeitgeist movement). In my view, that's an extremist point of view, disconnected from reality. The real problem is speculation, nepotism and corruption. You can have very easy oligarchs and plutocrats in a money-free society because they can simply steal your potatoes and get away with it, having friends in the police / prosecutors / judges. They can get a bigger house from the government than you because they know the "right" people. And so on. It's extremely naive to believe that money are the root of the problem. Human greed is the root of the problem, and greed works with or without money.

Of course OSE needs money, it's much easier for me to send money to OSE from Spain to USA, instead of sending them potatoes or wires or metals. I send money (the measure of my work) to OSE, and then OSE will buy the things it needs, paying some people like me in USA who provide them materials and therefore valuing their work.

We need open source machines and appliances like air. No matter how "evil" someone might suspect Marcin to be, once a product is open source, it can be produced by anyone without limitation and it will improve the world a lot. If Marcin can get very rich, that means any of us can get very rich, producing the same machines because there are no restrictions to produce them. To be honest, I prefer Marcin to be a greedy investor (I know he is not, but for the sake of argument) who delivers open source machines fast, efficient, get insanely rich from selling machines and parts instead of being a weak, compassionate human being who just talks about principles and does nothing to implement them. Even if Marcin would be like that, once the machines will be available, anyone can replicate his work, and the people can buy and repair machines for cheap, therefore they will be lifted from poverty.

You need a lot of resources to make the 50 GVCS machines - is anyone providing those resources for free? Is it even possible to provide those resources without money? I think those 7-figure budgets are quite low for such a great task. What's wrong with globalized simultaneous engineering efforts? OSE needs help from as many supporters as needed, from anyone in the world, and those efforts have to be synchronized, of course. Charts with directorates and hierarchies are needed in order to provide the coherent work flow. Job offers are also for those who want to work for free. Shall Marcin abandon or delay the OSE project for years just because a single slot can't be filled with a voluntary? It's important to get the job done, as fast as possible, there is nothing wrong to pay someone to do a part of the job until you can get the right people to do it voluntarily.

I don't think we should just sit, do nothing, complain, dream and make movies like those at TVP. We need to take action and use the tools we have at this moment.

I think Marcin is neither a guru, nor a capitalistic industrialist nor an altruistic savior. I think he just knows that open source hardware will be a big improvement to the world and someone has to do it. But I really don't believe he wants to become a legend, the most famous or the epic "hero of heroes" of this world. He understands what the world needs and he tries to deliver that.

It looks to me like your worry comes from an unrealistic fear of money and fear of "capitalism". You should fear monopoly, price fixing, nepotism and corruption in the first place - not money.

I do not fear money, I just despise the concept. It's superfluous, outdated and potentially disastrous. But that's another topic.

My confusion simply is about if money making is the goal of OSE or a (possibly reluctantly) accepted necessity? If it is the first, I will happily take advantage of the project and support it mostly via promoting it (what I'm doing for quite some time already), if it is the second, I'm willing to contribute much more substantially to the project.

Thank you Eli, that wiki-article points into the direction I am aiming (and I took the opportunity to improve its German translation). It describes what I understood OSE is aiming for when I learned about that some 2 years ago. I was a bit concerned, that this, let's say philosophical, foundation of OSE is in danger to go missing with the success and the growth of the project, especially when realizing the effects of timelines and deadlines, of budgets and personnel, of peer pressure and public demands on the people leading it. The devils kiss of power and riches is never far away, when a good idea succeeds.

I do not fear money, I just despise the concept. It's superfluous, outdated and potentially disastrous.

Then try to carry potatoes or tomatoes around, changing them for the goods you need. So you can check how "outdated" the money are.Money can have a much less influence on people's lives if the governments would just prevent speculation and encourage job creation. In that case, everyone will get a job and will be able to buy the things they need.The danger is in monopoly, price fixing, corruption and crime, not in money.

In general, people who talk like you will try to implement a new system (like replacing capitalism with communism) without addressing the most basic issues of economy. And in the end, when their new system fails, they call each other "jerks" and they resign that "it didn't work". That's exactly what happened with the communism.

Very interesting Wiki article. I have never read it before and it is very well written. It does make the process seem much more easy than it is though lol. Although I suppose that it the hook of the article!

As for the talk about money. It is neither good nor bad, as it is a tool to be used. The question lies in how well adapted it is to modern society. While it could be debated till we are old and grey, I feel that there are much better accounting systems out there that would make far greater use of the available resources.

gonzo wrote: The danger is in monopoly, price fixing, corruption and crime, not in money.

Monopolies are defined and fueled by money.Price fixings are determined in money.Corruption is done via money.Crime is done because of and for money.

Take money out of the equation, and see what happens. The danger is in money. Everything else are utilizations of money, mostly with the aim to get more of it. Without money, you would have none of it.

And yes, communism is not the solution. One reason is because it is based on money as every other form of regime being practiced for the last 5,000 years. What is needed is a political system which does not rely on money, what in consequence demands an economic system which is not based on money. Actually, there is such an economic system, practiced till today in some parts of the world: subsistence. Just follow this idea, and at the end of the day you will realize that money is in fact not necessary to house, feed or cloth people or to provide them with necessary services.

Add today's possibilities of computers and knowledge of activity based costing measured in time but money, and the need of money to assign and measure worth simply vanishes. There's more to it what I might discuss in future in a different thread, but for those interested a good start into that topic is Tony Waters' book "The Persistence of Subsistence Agriculture". For more ideas how to create a society without money a good read would be J.W. Smith's "The World's Wasted Worth 2" or Bob Blain's "The most Wealth for Least Work through Cooperation".

Simply displacing money with something different, while necessary, is not sufficient. To stick to money just because we have it since 5,000 years is just dumb. The older a societal concept is, the more it should become a candidate for reengineering. Don't you think that with today's knowledge and technology we could not have something more efficient and less dangerous than ancient concept of money? More efficient and less dangerous than today's version of territorial dominance called nation states? More efficient and less dangerous then today's version of robber-baron's rights called property? More efficient and less dangerous than today's version of slavery called religion? As long as we do not question those ancient concepts, our civilization is doomed. OSE's concept of open source technology is one huge step into the correct direction, because it tackles the concept of property and ownership.

Then try to carry potatoes or tomatoes around, changing them for the goods you need. So you can check how "outdated" the money are.When you assume the existence of a private property state, of course money is necessary. It's "outdated" because its tracking and allocation functions can be replaced by far superior systems.Money can have a much less influence on people's lives if the governments would just prevent speculation and encourage job creation. In that case, everyone will get a job and will be able to buy the things they need.The danger is in monopoly, price fixing, corruption and crime, not in money.No, capitalism is quite the danger itself. Private property and its creation of mass redundancy, the price system and its inability to internalize ecological costs, the need for full employment and the impossibility to fulfill that condition without supoptimal economic performance.Plus, monopolies are natural and highly efficient in capitalism. "Corruption" is just a word for trade that regular people don't think should happen. If a road to profit exists, it will be traveled.

And yes, communism is not the solution. One reason is because it is based on money as every other form of regime being practiced for the last 5,000 years. Communism in practice could not possibly be based on money, because money requires the existence of private property. I'm not sure how it manages resources, and can't find any literature on that very quickly.What is needed is a political system which does not rely on money, what in consequence demands an economic system which is not based on money.A moneyless society with a political system would at least have a binary class system. We don't need a different type of politics, we need the elimination of politics. Actually, there is such an economic system, practiced till today in some parts of the world: subsistence. Just follow this idea, and at the end of the day you will realize that money is in fact not necessary to house, feed or cloth people or to provide them with necessary services.We can go more advanced than that. It's important to intelligently manage our resources, and to create a significant abundance of materials and energy in order to protect against shortages.I have figured that the minimal amount of abundance you want to have is equal to the mass and energy that would be consumed in the time it takes to boost production back to adequate levels. Knowing this requires high-resolution measurement of supply and demand (individually, and directly, as opposed to the conflated encoding of money) and population growth. In fact, the mere creation of an economic system without property, and subsequent uplifting of impoverished parts of the world, along with access to birth control, would cause a drop in population that would leave the next few generations with a high abundance from the existing large production scale. Not only that, but without the redundancy of products created by private property, and using centralized access, much of the work in having an abundance of products is already done.In general, people who talk like you will try to implement a new system (like replacing capitalism with communism) without addressing the most basic issues of economy. And in the end, when their new system fails, they call each other "jerks" and they resign that "it didn't work". That's exactly what happened with the communism.None of the "communist" societies actually eliminated private property or classism.

Not only should capitalism be replaced, it will be unable to continue past a certain level of technology. This effect is already showing up, and is one cause of the huge inequality in income across the globe. Plus, there's the whole, we only have ~15 years before capitalism fucks us over with runaway climate change from fossil fuel emissions...thing.

It seems to me that a natural transition to self-governing, decentralized, resource-based alternative currencies will minimize the damage from the all but inevitable collapse of other-governing, over-centralized, debt-based currencies. Could debt speculation systems still have a place in projects for facilitating multi-trillion returns from off earth-resources? Open question. I think OSE's practices still embody a Prime Solution. To me, "money", fundamentally, remains simply a measurement-counter for how much others appreciate any given activity. We simply need smarter and more open source money systems.

Again, money assumes the existence of private property, which,1. Creates redundancy through each person owning their own copy of a thing.2. Requires a huge, expensive, and oppressive maintenance system.3. Externalizes or dividies ecological considerations when a person is deciding on an action.4. Creates exclusionary access to resources, an implicit type of class division, which is antithetical to freedom.

And to reiterate, intelligent management of resources requires direct accounting and management of resources, which an irreversibly encoded tracking system is unable to accomplish. In all currently implemented forms, there is basically no penalty for accruing increasing amounts of wealth, in fact it is rewarded by its ability to make additional wealth gain easier.

What purpose does speculation fulfill? It is a deadlock on a subset of resources that provides stochastic protection against shortages. We can create deterministic protection against shortages, without using any type of semaphore, so there should be no need for speculation, either.

Communism in practice could not possibly be based on money, because money requires the existence of private property.

Money does not require the existence of private property. Money is nothing but a tool which documents debt relations (read David Graeber's "Debt: The first 5000 years" on that) and a measurement system to describe worth. You can make money property, what is obviously done all over, but this tool can exist fine without a concept of private property. All communist regimes we had so far have banned private property but used money just as any capitalistic system. You can argue that because of that these system were in fact not communistic, and I would not try to protest this statement.

Money is not the reason for our dilemma, it is only the paper documenting and fueling it.

A moneyless society with a political system would at least have a binary class system. We don't need a different type of politics, we need the elimination of politics.

An anarchy does not have a binary class system by definition. A true democracy would also not have a binary class system, because the people would rule and the governance would just act on behalf and follow orders. Today it is just the other way around, thus we do not have real democracies (with very few exceptions). We can't eliminate politics, since we can't eliminate the necessity to coordinate communities and their needs, what is called politics. Even anarchy is a political system.

Not only should capitalism be replaced, it will be unable to continue past a certain level of technology. ...

The main reason capitalism cannot work is shown by the simple mathematics of exponential functions. Today's capitalism is dependent on growth, it cannot function without it. The capitalistic system as we know it started at the end of the 18th century with the beginning of industrialization. It's exponential power could be absorbed in the past two centuries because there was room for it, whole continents, where growth could expand to. This is no longer possible.

In Germany, the goal of economic growth is official government policy (and I assume, that is the same case for most of the other industrialized countries). It is even operationalized with 3% per annum. Actually, the world's economic system grew 4,7% per year on average since the last world war. What nobody thinks about is what that means: Would our economy grow in the same rate the next 100 years as it has done the last 60 years, our planet would need to produce 64 times the products and services it does today when the next century starts. For more then just one reason, this is not possible. That would mean for instance 5 billion cars being produced every year, or a new car for each person, from the starving infant in Sahel to the dement pensionist in Florida, every three to four years, depending how many people we will have on our planet by then. Even if we would only have an average 3% growth rate in the next hundred years, we still would need to produce 16 times as much as we do today by the end of this century.

Since capitalism cannot exist without growth, because it's fuel feeding system, the world's money based monetary systems and banks cannot exist without growth (mainly because of interest effects), and since there is no longer any room anymore to expand to to allow for growth, the system will collapse within this century. And it will exist till it collapses dramatically, since it will fight for survival till its very end.

As of today, a small group of people, probably a few hundred thousand globally (at present our world has around 1,100 billionaires), own directly and indirectly more then half of our planet. They are not encapsulated entities, they know each other, are married to each other, are befriended with each other or are relatives. They execute their power and control their wealth with a system of around 50.000 companies which act transnationally. Less then 150 of those companies control around half of the world's transnational businesses total revenue (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed--the-capitalist-network-that-runs-the-world.html). When the system collapses, those people will sit in their bunkers, watch the world coming down and wait for the end of everything to have the planet for themselves, undisputed. That is the final goal and purpose of capitalism. And their tool is money.

Money does not require the existence of private property.Money is traded.You can make money property, what is obviously done all over, but this tool can exist fine without a concept of private property.How? Also, money is a terrible tracking/allocation system.All communist regimes we had so far have banned private property but used money just as any capitalistic system.Actually, they had state property, which is simply a different kind of private entity.An anarchy does not have a binary class system by definition.Nor does it have politics, because that would imply a state.We can't eliminate politics, since we can't eliminate the necessity to coordinate communities and their needs, what is called politics.Politics are based on opinions, while a real society should be run based on the scientific method.

@Rabert:Monopolies are defined and fueled by money. Price fixings are determined in money. Corruption is done via money. Crime is done because of and for money.Absolute nonsense. Monopolies are fueled by greed. Price fixing can be determined very well in potatoes also. Corruption is done for other goods also: products and services (like for example sex). Crime is done for many many other reasons: sex, jealousy, boredrom, religious fanaticism, etc.. Sorry to disappoint you but you have to wake up from a dream. Reality is not Jacque Fresco's fantasy. Many times the people in the government are hurting their own people because they are rewarded directly in goods (like for example houses, land) or in services. You can steal someone else's potatoes and then pay with potatoes the workers who make a bigger house for you. You can share the potatoes with the police/prosecutors/judges so they cover the crime and so on. I have seen innumerable cases of corruption where people were payed directly in goods.

Add today's possibilities of computers and knowledge of activity based costing measured in time but money, and the need of money to assign and measure worth simply vanishes.Well, it's easier to hack a computer memory than to steal someone's money. At least the money are something physical, on the other end the computer databases are highly volatile and vulnerable. That's why I said that we can live without money but only when everyone can trust everyone else.

Bob Blain's "The most Wealth for Least Work through Cooperation".Well, you see, that's exactly what is missing - cooperation. Check for example the Occupy Wall Street movement - they want to steal the already existing private property in order to transform it into cooperatives. Instead of just building cooperatives. The people just want another system and ideology that fixes everything for them. That's never going to work. Because the people have to fix the things for themselves. You will never see any communist / socialist leader who calls the people to build cooperatives. Because they are all politicians (i.e.: charlatans). They just promise to the people that the new system will fix everything for them. Because they only want power, not solutions for the people. Have you ever seen Michael Moore calling the people to build cooperatives and to expand them? They can use donations and voluntary work for doing that! But the people don't want to bother to build solutions - they just want solutions for free!

Don't you think that with today's knowledge and technology we could not have something more efficient and less dangerous than ancient concept of money?Money are not dangerous. Greed and the will to be above, to enslave others is dangerous. Slavery existed way before money.

If you still believe you are right, then please answer to the following basic question:Why do you think slavery, crime and human exploitation existed before money?

@Ackhuman:When you assume the existence of a private property state, of course money is necessary.The clothes on you must be private property for example. You don't want someone else to take them off from you whenever they feel like. Your food is for you to eat, not for others to take it from you whenever they want. Your computer is yours - you can keep your work on it so you don't have to lose it whenever someone feels like taking away your computer. However, I believe that the government should rent houses/apartments to the people, replacing the need to own a house. That's the best way to prevent speculation in the real estate market, and that will prevent future economic crisis. Once they do that, the need of money will be greatly reduced and the people will depend much less on money. Because in that case, even if someone is stealing all your money savings, you don't lose your house. Therefore, the point is to reduce monopolies and speculation, not to eliminate the money.

Plus, monopolies are natural and highly efficient in capitalism.Saying that, you just proved how efficient is the system that tricks you to believe that we live in capitalism. We do not live in true capitalism, because we don't have control of speculation. The US govt. is constantly forcing companies to pay penalties for price fixing. Like for example this:LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for participating in a liquid crystal display price-fixing conspiracy and pay $585 million in fines - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10095219-92.htmlWhy do you think US govt split AT&T into smaller companies decades ago? Because they know that capitalism doesn't work with monopolies, speculation and price fixing.BUT, they "forgot" to deal with the real estate price speculation. Because they wanted to create the economic crisis. They know very well that capitalism doesn't work with speculation but they just pretended they don't know such a basic fact. Because the best place to hide the truth is in everyone's eyesight.

"Corruption" is just a word for trade that regular people don't think should happen. If a road to profit exists, it will be traveled.Profit can be in houses, land, potatoes/tomatoes/apple, clothes, sex, vacations, travel, and many other forms of providing pleasure. The road can't be traveled when you have tough regulation in place and when the people are vigilant to make sure the rules are respected. The real problem is that the people are not vigilant because they want the system to fix everything for them. You have been tricked to think in the terms our politicians want us to think: "a new system (without money) can fix everything for the people". We are trained to think that democracy means only freedom of speach and freedom to vote, and all we have to do is to find a system that is fixing everything for us. By the contrary: democracy means freedom to associate in the first place. We are not living in true democracy because we don't bother to use the freedom to associate in order to fix community problems. Our problems exist mainly because of us, not because of the system. Because we don't bother to create democracy.

Communism in practice could not possibly be based on money, because money requires the existence of private property. I'm not sure how it manages resources, and can't find any literature on that very quickly.You need to have private property (for example clothes) and you have to provide something in exchange for getting that. So you have to provide either other goods or a currency. Money are just the best currency - an instrument. Real communism is based on shared private property - the people own together the factories (=cooperatives) or they own their small patch of land and they can make their own food.

We don't need a different type of politics, we need the elimination of politics.Exactly. But in order to eliminate politics, we have to engage into building solutions and cooperatives. And that's very hard to do because the people are brainwashed very efficiently. They wait for a new ideology/system/guru/politician to fix everything for them. They want to steal private property and transform it into cooperatives instead of simply build new cooperatives. It's not the new system or the new ideology that can fix everything for the people. It's the people who can fix everything for the people. It's as easy as that.

@planettrailheaderIt seems to me that a natural transition to self-governing, decentralized, resource-based alternative currencies will minimize the damage from the all but inevitable collapse of other-governing, over-centralized, debt-based currencies. We live in a debt-based system because of the speculation. Houses are way too expensive comparing to how it should be. Then you have to make a loan to buy your own house - and that's how you get into debt. If the government would just rent houses/apartments to the people, then you won't have to make loans and you won't be in debt. It's just as easy as that. Look for example at Germany/Austria - they have good public housing - in effect their house prices are ridiculously low comparing to other countries, and they had no economic crisis!

Could debt speculation systems still have a place in projects for facilitating multi-trillion returns from off earth-resources? Open question.The "multi-trillion returns" should return to the people, and therefore speculation must be eliminated. Eliminate the speculation and you eliminate (most of the) debt.

I think OSE's practices still embody a Prime Solution.Yes, because when you need another component for your machine, you can simply buy that component, instead of buying a new machine. That is reducing speculation.

To me, "money", fundamentally, remains simply a measurement-counter for how much others appreciate any given activity. We simply need smarter and more open source money systems.Exactly. Money measure work. And once we eliminate the speculation, people's work will not be wasted anymore.Open source hardware will make you depend much less on money because you buy only the components you need, instead of buying whole new machines/products.

@Ackhuman:Again, money assumes the existence of private property, which,1. Creates redundancy through each person owning their own copy of a thing.Wow! You want to share your clothes? Your TV? Your computer? Are you happy if anyone enters into your house and do anything whenever they want?2. Requires a huge, expensive, and oppressive maintenance system.Rubbish. The money are the best currency. Try to replace money with another currency - like for example tomatoes. Then you will see what "expensive" means. It's much more expensive to carry 2 tons of tomatoes instead of $500.

3. Externalizes or dividies ecological considerations when a person is deciding on an action.You can use money in order to buy land and then you create your own food and things. Then you can sell your extra products for money. So you can use money without externalizing anything.

4. Creates exclusionary access to resources, an implicit type of class division, which is antithetical to freedom.Imbalanced access to resources is created by speculation and corruption

And to reiterate, intelligent management of resources requires direct accounting and management of resources, which an irreversibly encoded tracking system is unable to accomplish. In all currently implemented forms, there is basically no penalty for accruing increasing amounts of wealth, in fact it is rewarded by its ability to make additional wealth gain easier.The penalty must be for monopoly, price fixing and speculation. In that case, the people will be able to access the resources they need.

What purpose does speculation fulfill? It is a deadlock on a subset of resources that provides stochastic protection against shortages. We can create deterministic protection against shortages, without using any type of semaphore, so there should be no need for speculation, either.There is no need for speculation. The problem is that the speculation is tolerated - by our politicians and by us.

Well, gonzo, you obviously fell victim to the more of 60 years of indoctrination, coercion and propaganda your parents and youself were subjected to after WW II. But let's start at the beginning.

Absolute nonsense. Monopolies are fueled by greed. Price fixing can be determined very well in potatoes also. Corruption is done for other goods also: products and services (like for example sex). Crime is done for many many other reasons: sex, jealousy, boredrom, religious fanaticism, etc.. Sorry to disappoint you but you have to wake up from a dream.

Greed alone is useless. It needs something to manifest in. You can be as greedy as you want, you would not get any satisfaction from having double the tonnage of potatoes than your neighbour, when you can eat only so much. You can't even sell it, because there is no money which could act as an intermediate to change one useless surplus against the useless surplus of one other person. Greed can only thrive because there is money to allow to benefit from it. If there would be no money, there is a hard time to live out greed. I do not say there will not be any greed at all without money. But it would be much, much more difficult to act on it, and what is left, is not as damaging to society as greed combined with money as its weapon and fuel.

How would you fix a price in potatoes when there is not thing as the ability to arbitrarily set a price? The price of potatoes should be determined by the time needed to produce it, store it, and bring it to the family eating it. This is not set, this is measured and not subject to some "fixing". Only money allows to set a price completely outside of effort and time needed to produce it. Without money, that would not be possible. With money, those in the power to fix prices are in the power to accumulate wealth.Without money, you reiterate facts which are set by physical law and are not object to manipulation.

Yes, corruption is done with other means of payment besides mones as well. But this does not free money from being the main agent for corruption. Without money, the most potent and most widely used means of corruption would simply vanish. Corruption would still take place (in case the removal of money would be the only change of society out of the necessary four), but much less frequent.

Yes again, crime is done for other reasons but money as well. But simply look up what crimes are done today, and for what reasons they are done. You will find that more then 90% of all crimes are done with getting money as its final motivation.

gonzo, simply avoiding the red pill will not make the problem go away. It is true, money makes a lot of things easier, but it is simply catastrophically destructive in the end, as we all can see today, where the end comes into sight. Besides religion, there is nothing in history of man which has brought more unjustice, death and sorrow to man than money. If there would be no money, there would be no reason or motivation at all for much of the evil billions of people are suffering from in the past and this very day.

Why do you think slavery, crime and human exploitation existed before money?That one is easy. It is because you do not need money to enslave people, but physical power. Money only adds motivation to slavery, because it makes it much easier to make a commodity of man. The same is true for crime. Crime means to violate rules. Nothing more, nothing less. Again, with money you have additional motivation to commit crimes, since it is an easy way to come to money. Without money, most acts of crime do not make any sense at all anymore, because you won't profit from it. What would be the profit for the drug dealer, when he can't get money for his goods, because there is no such thing as money? Sex? Well, the day has only 24 hours .... Human exploitation is as old as humans are: The strong demands things from the weak under threat of dire consequences if they do not follow. That was done long, long before the concept of money was thought of.

Money is not the reason or source of all evil or suffering or injustice in our world, but of lots, if not the vast majority, of it.

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What you wrote about cooperations as part of the solution is completely correct. And - if our civilization would be based on cooperation instead of profit, we would actually not have any need for money anymore, since we would cooperate to fulfill needs, not to trade to generate profits.

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Just a few sentences on the topic of property in general.

Property is a legal concept, nothing more. It strenghtens the right of someone to use something to the point, that it is undisputable. It takes away the obligation to use what one has wisely and for as much benefit to the society the owner is living in, with and from, as possible. First, our species was not born with property. The strongest took what he could and defended it from being taken away by others. This was the rule over thousands of years till the time of medivial age's robber barons. Than law was invented, our society became jurisdictified, a regulated body. That is, in the big picture, a still quite novel concept, and what we have as law today is in most of its aspects not older than industrial age. Property actually was one of the foremost reasons to create law and motivation to enforce law (The judge to his student in Victorian England: "What is the most important goal and purpose of law?" Student "To protect property against the mob!" Judge" "Correct!"). Jean Jacques Rousseau was one of the people who opposes property as being justified by law. He started his Second Discourse on Inequality with the statement:The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. Humanity would have been spared infinite crimes, wars, homicides, murders, if only someone had ripped up the fences or filled in the ditches and said, "Do not listen to this pretender! You are eternally lost if you do not remember that the fruits of the earth are everyone's property and that the land is no-one's property!" Unfortunately, he lost in the then vivid discussions on how to organize society.

What we today accept as a fact has been invented by those in power, by those who profit from such a regulation. Property has its origin in being taken by the strong from the weak, and making it legal is only to advantage to the strong, which do now not have to defend it anymore by physical force in the most cases. The swords and polearms of the robber barons have been replaced by lawyers, judges and their textbooks. This, however, does not make it anymore right. What is different in today's time is the fact, that the have-nots have no chance anymore to escape, because the whole world is now property of someone. If you are one of the vast majority of the world's population of today who have virtually nothing, you have no chance at all to acquire something without the consent of those who possess already.

Well, gonzo, you obviously fell victim to the more of 60 years of indoctrination, coercion and propaganda your parents and youself were subjected to after WW II. But let's start at the beginning.LOL, that is the biggest nonsense you can say. Sadly, I am one of the very few (or maybe alone?) who understands that the capitalism doesn't work with speculation, price fixing and monopoly. I understand that the crisis and speculation in the real estate can be prevented by having public housing. If the government is not doing public housing, then the people like you and me can make an organization that can do the government's job. I am calling the people to create public housing and to put pressure on the government to do decent public housing. I am calling the people to ask Habitat for Humanity to implement solutions (rent houses instead of selling them). I am calling the people to build cooperatives, unlike all of the communist/socialist leaders who are calling the people to steal already existing private companies. I do understand that we do not live in real capitalism, but our leaders just want us to think that we live in capitalism - they label a slavery based society as "capitalist". Please, show me one person who thinks like me, and show me anyone who speaks like me in newspapers/radio/TV ! There are so many Nobel prize winners for economy who don't even understand that capitalism can't work with speculation. And then, who is indoctrinating me, if nobody speaks like me?On the other hand, there are strong indications that you are indoctrinated since you talk exactly like those money-hating "gurus" (like for example the leader of The Venus Project).

Greed alone is useless. It needs something to manifest in. You can be as greedy as you want, you would not get any satisfaction from having double the tonnage of potatoes than your neighbor, when you can eat only so much. You can't even sell it, because there is no money which could act as an intermediate to change one useless surplus against the useless surplus of one other person.LOL, you can trade potatoes for other goods and services. Monkeys trade fruits for sexual favors for example. In rural subsistence economies, people pay with food and raw material instead of money. You can trade surplus potatoes for someone else's surplus. Of course you won't trade the potatoes you need to eat, you only trade the surplus!!

Greed can only thrive because there is money to allow to benefit from it. If there would be no money, there is a hard time to live out greed. I do not say there will not be any greed at all without money. But it would be much, much more difficult to act on it, and what is left, is not as damaging to society as greed combined with money as its weapon and fuel.Absolutely false. It's like you blame the gun instead of blaming the criminal. Money are better currency than potatoes and that's all. It's just a more efficient instrument. A criminal can kill with with a rock, with a club, or with a knife. But it's insane to blame the knife instead of blaming the criminal. Sure, the criminal can kill faster with a knife, because it's more efficient but a knife is just a tool.

How would you fix a price in potatoes when there is not thing as the ability to arbitrarily set a price? Very easy. You ask 10 tomatoes for 1 potato, instead of asking 1 tomato for 1 potato. That's price fixing. If only you have the license to produce potatoes, you can fix their price as you will, without need of money.Look what someone said on another thread:(In Zambia) In the event the corn is taken to the cities for milling, they are returned to the rural communities at exorbitant prices. - http://forum.opensourceecology.org/discussion/796/why-dont-we-have-a-millThe mills charge many times in corn/wheat instead of charging in money. So if you take 10 tons of wheat to the mill, and instead of charging you a decent price (let's say 100 kg), the mill owner will charge you 9 tons of wheat. Therefore for 10 tons of wheat, you get only 1 ton of wheat flour, when you should get 9.9 tons. That is price fixing. The mill owner can do that because he is connected with the government / police and no one else can get a license to make a mill in that area. That's how corruption works and that's how it generates monopoly, speculation and price fixing, driving the people poor. You don't have to involve money into that.

The price of potatoes should be determined by the time needed to produce it, store it, and bring it to the family eating it. This is not set, this is measured and not subject to some "fixing". Only money allows to set a price completely outside of effort and time needed to produce it. Absolute nonsense. If only you are allowed to produce potatoes (the corrupt govt only gives you the license), you can fix it's price as you wish. You can ask 100 kg of wheat for 1 kg a potato, instead of 1 kg of wheat for 1 kg of potato. So the price doesn't only depend of the time and effort to make it.

Without money, that would not be possible. With money, those in the power to fix prices are in the power to accumulate wealth. False, I proved it above. Without money, those in power can accumulate wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, etc. and then they can trade it for land/work/whatever.

Without money, you reiterate facts which are set by physical law and are not object to manipulation.There are lots of people manipulated with religion and that doesn't depend on money, to give just a single example. The corrupt government can give a lincense only to you, and then you can manipulate the people with it. That's how monopoly works, and it doesn't depend on money.

Yes, corruption is done with other means of payment besides money as well. But this does not free money from being the main agent for corruption. Without money, the most potent and most widely used means of corruption would simply vanish. Corruption would still take place (in case the removal of money would be the only change of society out of the necessary four), but much less frequent.Wrong. Money are the most efficient tool for trading. But it's the organized crime that is guilty for corruption, not the money. And it's the people like you who just complain about the system and do nothing or almost nothing to implement solutions who are even more guilty for allowing organized crime to thrive. Blame the criminal, not it's gun.

Yes again, crime is done for other reasons but money as well. But simply look up what crimes are done today, and for what reasons they are done. You will find that more then 90% of all crimes are done with getting money as its final motivation.If you eliminate money, then trading will be much more difficult. It will be very expensive for you to send 10 tons of potatoes to Samsung in South Korea in order to get a new smartphone.Technology can't be developed fast enough without an efficient currency. We would have to return to a very primitive life. And that would not prevent crime. You can ban knifes but that won't stop the people to kill. The same with money.

gonzo, simply avoiding the red pill will not make the problem go away.That's exactly what I have to tell you. Just banning a tool that can be used to hurt people won't make the crime to go away. Treating the effect of an illness won't cure it. You have to go to the cause, to the root of the illness and to treat it. Have you seen anyone calling others to ask the government to prevent speculation? Have you seen anyone calling the people to ask Habitat for Humanity to implement solutions instead of wasting money? Replacing a system with another system won't fix problems. It's only the people who can implement the solutions, not a system or an ideology. Unfortunately, almost no one want to even talk about solutions, they just want another system to fix everything for them.

It is true, money makes a lot of things easier, but it is simply catastrophically destructive in the end, as we all can see today, where the end comes into sight. Besides religion, there is nothing in history of man which has brought more unjustice, death and sorrow to man than money. If there would be no money, there would be no reason or motivation at all for much of the evil billions of people are suffering from in the past and this very day.This is a wonderfull example of a primitive and fundamentalist thinking promoted by people like Jacque Fresco. In the rural area of the poor countries people are exploited without even using money. And they are the majority in the poor countries. They simply can't get a license to make basic tools and they have to pay too much of their food for buying the tools they need. Because their corrupt governments maintain monopolies and price fixing.

Why do you think slavery, crime and human exploitation existed before money?That one is easy. It is because you do not need money to enslave people, but physical power. Money only adds motivation to slavery, because it makes it much easier to make a commodity of man. The same is true for crime. Crime means to violate rules. Nothing more, nothing less. Again, with money you have additional motivation to commit crimes, since it is an easy way to come to money. Without money, most acts of crime do not make any sense at all anymore, because you won't profit from it. What would be the profit for the drug dealer, when he can't get money for his goods, because there is no such thing as money? Sex? Well, the day has only 24 hours .... Human exploitation is as old as humans are: The strong demands things from the weak under threat of dire consequences if they do not follow. That was done long, long before the concept of money was thought of.The drug dealer can get wheat instead of money, and then he can pay with wheat the workers who make him a bigger house, they can pay in wheat the raw materials, the cars, the TV's and so on.

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What you wrote about cooperations as part of the solution is completely correct. And - if our civilization would be based on cooperation instead of profit, we would actually not have any need for money anymore, since we would cooperate to fulfill needs, not to trade to generate profits.Yes we should but no one would. That's the sad reality. Check the Occupy Wall Street forum for example. They only call for stealing existing private companies, instead of calling the people to build cooperatives. Nobody wants to talk about building communism. They just want a new system to fix everything for them!I so much wish to be wrong and people talking about building solutions to exist, but sadly I am not wrong!

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The swords and polearms of the robber barons have been replaced by lawyers, judges and their textbooks. This, however, does not make it anymore right. What is different in today's time is the fact, that the have-nots have no chance anymore to escape, because the whole world is now property of someone.Nonsense. The have-nots can start to work together, they can start even with non-lucrative activities (like cleaning the street) in order to learn to work in a team. Then they can move to profit-generating activities. They can at least accept donations for starting cooperatives! Have you seen the recent Kickstarter project Ouya gaming console? They got $7 million in no time, without the need of having their own money. The have-nots don't need money, they need to start working together and they need to accept donations for that. But they can't even be bothered with that! They want the benefits of democracy without creating those benefits! They just want a slave government to give them all the benefits!

Or check my comments (gonzo1) at this OWS post where I ask the original poster to call the people to build cooperatives instead of calling to steal the private companies. But of course he can't be bothered with building. He is focused on fighting and stealing private companies, like all the other socialist/communist leaders: http://occupywallst.org/forum/capitalism-exploitation-and-involuntary-agreements/

Absolute nonsense. Monopolies are fueled by greed.Which is caused by covetry for money, which is essential to survival in our current societal paradigm. Any system which is based on self-maximization through the trade of privatized resources will be more or less identical to the current system, or quickly approach a similar state.Corruption is done for other goods also: products and servicesYes, privatized products and services.Crime is done for many many other reasons: sex, jealousy, boredrom, religious fanaticism, etc..But the vast majority of it is for money or because of socioeconomic inequality. Even "religious" wars were really over property. "Religious" conflict like in the Middle East is over property. Jealousy is covetry, which only happens when you consider something "yours".

Well, you see, that's exactly what is missing - cooperation. Check for example the Occupy Wall Street movement - they want to steal the already existing private property in order to transform it into cooperatives.Well, where are they supposed to build cooperatives? All land in the United States is owned already. With what materials are they supposed to build the cooperatives? Occupiers are generally there because they've been screwed by society into poverty.You will never see any communist / socialist leader who calls the people to build cooperatives.You will never see a communist leader because communism is a stateless, classless society which precludes the possibility of leaders.Money are not dangerous. Greed and the will to be above, to enslave others is dangerous. Slavery existed way before money.Greed is caused by:

1. Fear for survival: Today survival is not an issue in terms of resources and technological development; It is only those who lack property that are unable to survive, and those that own far and above what they actually need do not help those that need it.2. Operant conditioning: The members of society which are most rewarded are those that are the greediest.

Why do you think slavery, crime and human exploitation existed before money?Please provide one or more sources that show:1. At what point slavery was invented2. At what point crime was invented, and how it could exist without codified law, which followed the invention of money3. At what point money was invented4. That all these things preceded the invention of enclosure.

I do understand that we do not live in real capitalism, but our leaders just want us to think that we live in capitalism - they label a slavery based society as "capitalist".1. What makes this capitalism not "real"?2. How did we get from "real" capitalism to "fake" capitalism, and how would we prevent subsequent fixes from reverting back to this version of capitalism?3. How could capitalism not be slavery-based, when it requires private ownership of the means of production, and compulsory, full employment of every member of society, wherein their very survival is contingent on them working for the rest of their lives (except, of course, those who own the means of production)?

There are so many Nobel prize winners for economy who don't even understand that capitalism can't work with speculation.Capitalism can't work without speculation, either. Because of its basis on the private property paradigm, it has no built-in mechanism to ensure ecological considerations are made part of cost calculations, or that if they are, they are according to global impact rather than private impact. In other words, capitalism cannot exist without negative externalities. Whether or not there was speculation on fossil fuels, there is still $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels that must stay in the ground in order for the planet to remain healthy.Absolutely false. It's like you blame the gun instead of blaming the criminal.It's like you blame the criminal, instead of blaming the violent, traumatic event that caused the criminal to commit violence.

Money are better currency than potatoes and that's all. It's just a more efficient instrument.Money is fundamentally different from barter in its effects:1. Accretion of products requires increasing amounts of storage and management infrastructure2. Accretion of products provides diminishing returns, because products are not universally coveted, and never in a magnitude approaching that of currency3. Accretion of a product does not increase your ability to acquire more of that product, without lots of external inputs (e.g. getting potato seeds, trading land for potatoes, trading farming equipment for potatoes, trading storage for potatoes)4. Products, especially food, can only be traded at certain times, and only for a short period before they go bad.5. Again, because a given product is not universally coveted, owning the majority of that product will not necessarily increase its value. If you possess most of the moeny in circulation, it will be far more valuable to everyone else.That's how corruption works and that's how it generates monopoly, speculation and price fixing, driving the people poor. You don't have to involve money into that.Property will do.Wrong. Money are the most efficient tool for trading. But it's the organized crime that is guilty for corruption, not the money.Organized crime will exist any time there is a banned commodity that can be traded to accumulate private wealth.

And it's the people like you who just complain about the system and do nothing or almost nothing to implement solutions who are even more guilty for allowing organized crime to thrive. Blame the criminal, not it's gun.Do you think criminals just phase into our world from some other dimension full of evil versions of ourselves? Criminals are created by society, just like philanthropists and regular johns are created by society. Quit whining about people blaming the wrong thing when you are doing precisely the same thing.

If you eliminate money, then trading will be much more difficult.You talk about charlatans and people blindly following what they've been told, yet you assume that trade is a given.It will be very expensive for you to send 10 tons of potatoes to Samsung in South Korea in order to get a new smartphone.What is it about Samsung's smartphones that requires they be built in South Korea?Oh, that's right, the fact that they possess the "intellectual property" which excludes anyone but them from building that particular model of phone, and the private land and productive facilities that make it possible to construct the phone.Technology can't be developed fast enough without an efficient currency.Um, you're posting on a web site developing open-source technology. Such irony cannot be intentional.We would have to return to a very primitive life.Would we? You've made quite the leap, going from "trade would be hard without money" to "we would have to live in a primative society if we didn't have money". Please delineate your train of thought and cite any sources for your factual assertions.

This is a wonderfull example of a primitive and fundamentalist thinking promoted by people like Jacque Fresco.I don't know what you think Jacque Fresco thinks about money, but he definitely understands that ending the use of money alone is enough to fix the problems to which it contributes.You again consider others to be simple, while your posts are full of "absolute"s and "right"s and "wrong"s. Our understanding of reality is not absolute, nor is it right or wrong. See the problem of induction.You should focus less of your efforts on insulting people and more actually opening your own thoughts to criticism, because it's pretty clear that you think you are some sagacious adept and everyone else here is a bunch of dumb sheep. You're not. You aren't even bright enough to consider that efficient technological development can happen without money, while you're posting on a web site about open-source technology, probably in an open-source browser, probably using information you got from a crowdsourced encyclopedia, through a communications medium developed on open-source software. I'm pretty sure a 95-year-old man who spends all his time reading, designing, building, and discussing technology and the future is WAY more intelligent than you.

Yes we should but no one would.Funny, it seems that there are lots of things called "companies" which are large groups of people cooperating for a common goal. Then there's also this website you are posting on, where people are cooperating to develop industrial technologies, which they very cooperatively provide instructions for anyone else to build.Oh, but Occupy Wall Street. Right.

~~~~The clothes on you must be private property for example. You don't want someone else to take them off from you whenever they feel like.That does not require the existence of private property. Why would someone take off my clothes whenever they feel like? If they had access to the clothing they need, they wouldn't.However, I believe that the government should rent houses/apartments to the people, replacing the need to own a house.Oh, but then people would just take your house whenever they feel like it.

Saying that, you just proved how efficient is the system that tricks you to believe that we live in capitalism.Capitalism is defined as a system in which resources are allocated privately to individual agents based on the market system. By definition, we live in capitalism. Your particular definition of captalism is not "true" capitalism just because you think that it works better that way. Capitalism is a well-defined concept, the criteria of which are met by our current social paradigm.

LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for participating in a liquid crystal display price-fixing conspiracy and pay $585 million in fines - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10095219-92.htmlThat's a cartel, not a monopoly. How do you propose to prevent the formation of cartels?

Profit can be in houses, land, potatoes/tomatoes/apple, clothes, sex, vacations, travel, and many other forms of providing pleasure. The road can't be traveled when you have tough regulation in place and when the people are vigilant to make sure the rules are respected.You mean like how there's tough regulations against organized crime, fraud, negligence, pollution, and other forms of socially irresponsible economic activity that happen all the time?Wow! You want to share your clothes? Your TV? Your computer? Are you happy if anyone enters into your house and do anything whenever they want?I do share my clothes, TV, and computer.Do you think people are just constantly trying to enter my house, and the only thing stopping them is that I own the house? That's not how reality works.Rubbish. The money are the best currency. Try to replace money with another currency - like for example tomatoes. Then you will see what "expensive" means. It's much more expensive to carry 2 tons of tomatoes instead of $500.I'm talking about private property, not money. Private property requires a huge system of maintenance and control, like legal codes, court systems, police, prisons, banks, guards, fences, gates, alarms, lights, sensors, cameras, weapons, storage facilities, keys, and identities. All of these cost probably as much, if not more, than the value of the things they are supposed to be protecting.You can use money in order to buy land and then you create your own food and things. Then you can sell your extra products for money. So you can use money without externalizing anything.Okay, so you don't even know what an externality is. Go read what externalities are before you try to argue with me about it.Imbalanced access to resources is created by speculation and corruptionNo, they're not. The first piece of land that was enclosed (made from commons into private property) created the very first imbalance of access to resources. One person had exclusive access to that piece of land, while everyone else had no access to it. Speculation did not exist for thousands of years afterward.As for "corruption", define "corruption" and explain the differences between corruption and normal acquisition of private resources.The penalty must be for monopoly, price fixing and speculation.1. There are natural mon-/olig-opolies that will exist whether or not you "penalize" them.2. Penalties do not prevent entirely a behavior from being exhibited.3. You are entirely ignoring my point about the fact that wealth accretion is always rewarded in increasing amounts, in order to continue rambling about the same shit you've already repeated dozens of times.

There is no need for speculation.No shit, that's what I wrote in that thing you are supposedly responding to.

Dude, seriously, you are not having a discussion here. All you're doing is reiterating one point, which you have not really supported with any reasoning or evidence, and then acting like we're all a bunch of twits for not agreeing (not even disagreeing) with you. I would like to maintain civility on this forum, but fuck you.

Absolute nonsense. Monopolies are fueled by greed.Which is caused by covetry for money, which is essential to survival in our current societal paradigm.Money are just a currency. People used currency way before money.See for yourself:"Originally money was a form of receipt, representing grain stored in temple granaries in Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, then Ancient Egypt." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency

Any system which is based on self-maximization through the trade of privatized resources will be more or less identical to the current system, or quickly approach a similar state.See? This is the kind of nonsense the "gurus" are pouring. Absolutist statements like "any system which .. will be identical". Apply some critical thinking, and then you will see such statements are rubbish. There is no decent proof or indication to sustain such statements.

Corruption is done for other goods also: products and servicesYes, privatized products and services.Umm.. privatized products like food for example? In primitive societies people make too many children without thinking if they will have enough food for them. And when they are too many, they kill each other for food or water.

Crime is done for many many other reasons: sex, jealousy, boredrom, religious fanaticism, etc..But the vast majority of it is for money or because of socioeconomic inequality. Even "religious" wars were really over property. "Religious" conflict like in the Middle East is over property. Money are just a currency. Replace money with another currency and the people will still commit crime in order to get the new currency. Even if you replace money with data in computer memory, they will still do crime in order to rewrite those computer memories.

Jealousy is covetry, which only happens when you consider something "yours".And what is your point? Are you going to try to program the way all the people feel sexual attraction?

Well, you see, that's exactly what is missing - cooperation. Check for example the Occupy Wall Street movement - they want to steal the already existing private property in order to transform it into cooperatives.Well, where are they supposed to build cooperatives? All land in the United States is owned already. With what materials are they supposed to build the cooperatives? Occupiers are generally there because they've been screwed by society into poverty.Yet some people could start OSE, others started Ouya, etc!Other people started cooperatives too, so they also can. They can accept donations, I already told you. Those who have jobs can save some money to start the cooperative. They can start even with non-lucrative activities, to learn to work in a team.

You will never see any communist / socialist leader who calls the people to build cooperatives.You will never see a communist leader because communism is a stateless, classless society which precludes the possibility of leaders.Someone has to show the people how to build communism. You can call them "leaders", or "speakers" if you like.But anyways, let me rephrase it: You will never see any communist / socialist speaker who calls the people to build cooperatives.

Money are not dangerous. Greed and the will to be above, to enslave others is dangerous. Slavery existed way before money.Greed is caused by:1. Fear for survival: Today survival is not an issue in terms of resources and technological development; It is only those who lack property that are unable to survive, and those that own far and above what they actually need do not help those that need it.There are poor people in Africa (Zimbabwe I think) who got their own land and they ruined it. It's not only about lack of property, that's also about lack of knowledge and minimum intelligence. On top of that, it's also those who can't get license to create/provide basic products and services. In Papua New Guinea the people are not using money yet they even eat each other! And they don't need to do that in order to survive..

2. Operant conditioning: The members of society which are most rewarded are those that are the greediest.Wrong. Poor people are also greedy. I am living between poor people and I have seen many. They just don't have the right connections in order to manifest their greed.

Why do you think slavery, crime and human exploitation existed before money?Please provide one or more sources that show:1. At what point slavery was inventedSlavery exists even in the animal world - see for example ants who enslave other species of ants. So it was invented millions of years ago. In the human communities, it definitely existed way before money. Tribes went to fight and enslaved other tribes, way before money existed. Many native Americans populations were not using money yet they had crime and slavery.

2. At what point crime was invented, and how it could exist without codified law, which followed the invention of moneyWow! So you suggest that stealing/murder committed before codified laws existed were not crimes? That's a tough one!Crime and stealing exists in all the animal world. It exists in the human communities since forever. Doesn't matter if it was codified in law or not. Those cannibals in Papua New Guinea are committing crime when they kill other people to eat them, it doesn't matter if they have codified law or not, that's still crime.

4. That all these things preceded the invention of enclosure.Sure. And what does that prove?

I do understand that we do not live in real capitalism, but our leaders just want us to think that we live in capitalism - they label a slavery based society as "capitalist".1. What makes this capitalism not "real"?Our system is not capitalist because it doesn't control speculation as it should. Germany had no real estate speculation and they had no crisis. It's as simple as that. The US government is very aggressive against speculation, EXCEPT real estate speculation. Because they wanted to create the crisis. You can call the system as you like, but it's not real capitalism. A simple label can't change reality.

2. How did we get from "real" capitalism to "fake" capitalism, and how would we prevent subsequent fixes from reverting back to this version of capitalism?It never was real capitalism, it was just a better capitalism. The process is very easy: The governments encouraged speculation (price inflation) and our (US, UK, France, Spain etc.) economic systems choked. In Germany they have good public housing, and that prevented a real estate bubble (price inflation, which equals speculation). Why would you pay a fortune for a house if you can rent one for a decent price? To prevent reverting back to current slavery-based system we just have to prevent speculation. We have to eradicate all price fixing, not only the electronics price fixing. We need tough regulations against speculation. How can you survive if a monopoly or a cartel will inflate tomorrow the prices of food for 100 times? If you look back in the history, even hundreds of years ago, in some societies there were tough penalties for food price speculation.Yes, Germany have real capitalism (or very close to real capitalism) - which is reenforced by public housing (which in turn can be seen by some as a "socialist" or "communist" feature). That's why I said that capitalism and communism are very similar when they are "real". Of course, fake capitalism is very different than fake communism. But the real capitalism is very similar with the real communism.

3. How could capitalism not be slavery-based, when it requires private ownership of the means of production, and compulsory, full employment of every member of society, wherein their very survival is contingent on them working for the rest of their lives (except, of course, those who own the means of production)?It can be slavery free of course. You said there a lot of things that are not true. In US there are lots of cooperatives. So the people can create their own means of production. The people retire at 67 in US, so they don't have to work for all the rest of their lives. Fight monopolies and price fixing and that will create real economic opportunities for everyone.The people can create cooperatives quite easy - I explained in the previous post how. Also, if the government can't handle the unemployed, at least it can give them land so they (the poor) can make their own food. The government can nationalize land or it can buy it at a determined (i.e.: decent) price. The government can make companies that create food, clothes, houses and can employ people in those companies. If the govt. doesn't have money, then at least it can give to the people a share of the result of their work. The govt. has police/secret service/prosecutors to check those companies and to make sure they are free of corruption. The US government is paying a lot of unemployed people right now - have you ever wondered why it's not asking those people to do some work in return for that help? It's because the US government WANTS an economic crisis. It will last for a few more years, until United States of Europe (USE) will be created. People of Europe have to be very scared in order to accept USE creation. And US is helping to create that scare - that's all with the economic crisis.You just have to throw away your belief that "money" and "property" are the root of evil for 10 minutes if you truly want to see reality.

There are so many Nobel prize winners for economy who don't even understand that capitalism can't work with speculation.Capitalism can't work without speculation, either.That is BS! And you talk about indoctrination!Cartels and monopolies are created in order to speculate the prices (to inflate prices) of basic commodities. Capitalism is choked and can't function when you have price fixing.

Because of its basis on the private property paradigm,Private property has nothing to do with price fixing. If you want the system to work, you have to prevent price fixing - either in a capitalist or a communist economy. A group of cooperatives can also create cartels, monopolies ant can fix the prices. It's not about capitalism/communism but it's about regulation. Speculation should not be tolerated.

it has no built-in mechanism to ensure ecological considerations are made part of cost calculations, or that if they are, they are according to global impact rather than private impact. In other words, capitalism cannot exist without negative externalities. Whether or not there was speculation on fossil fuels, there is still $20 trillion worth of fossil fuels that must stay in the ground in order for the planet to remain healthy.Yet it's the first world capitalist states who are making the biggest efforts for using green energy :)So you are wrong in your logic somehow, isn't it?

Absolutely false. It's like you blame the gun instead of blaming the criminal.It's like you blame the criminal, instead of blaming the violent, traumatic event that caused the criminal to commit violence.Then you have an excuse for anything. Sure, people who suffered trauma must be treated and cured. And above all, trauma must be prevented. And the best way to prevent it is to make sure the economy works and there are enough resources to take care of those in need.But you can't ask for the criminals to be left free to damage others as much as they please, because "it's not their fault", that would be insane. They must be handled: prisons, hospitals, etc.

Money are better currency than potatoes and that's all. It's just a more efficient instrument.Money is fundamentally different from barter in its effects:1. Accretion of products requires increasing amounts of storage and management infrastructureThat's why money are a more efficient currency.

2. Accretion of products provides diminishing returns, because products are not universally coveted, and never in a magnitude approaching that of currencyThat's why money are a cheaper and more efficient currency :)

3. Accretion of a product does not increase your ability to acquire more of that product, without lots of external inputs (e.g. getting potato seeds, trading land for potatoes, trading farming equipment for potatoes, trading storage for potatoes)That's why money are a cheaper and more efficient currency :)

4. Products, especially food, can only be traded at certain times, and only for a short period before they go bad.That's why we use money instead of potatoes :) Someone was thinking about all those above before, isn't it?

5. Again, because a given product is not universally coveted, owning the majority of that product will not necessarily increase its value. If you possess most of the moeny in circulation, it will be far more valuable to everyone else.Exactly. And a big cooperative needs to trade big values with other entities. That's why a big tomato-producing cooperative needs money instead of potatoes when they sell their tomatoes.If you ban money, then trade will be extremely expensive and hard to do - you proved with the above true statements.Sure, it will be slightly more difficult for a warlord in Africa to buy a BMW but not something he can't handle. But then it will be almost impossible for an average African to buy a computer or an internet connection.Less technology and information will lead to more isolation, which in turn only encourages the rise of corruption, crime and warlords in remote areas.

That's how corruption works and that's how it generates monopoly, speculation and price fixing, driving the people poor. You don't have to involve money into that.Property will do.If you ban property in your country, the organized crime will keep doing it's job and will save the money into bank accounts in Switzerland. That's how it worked in communist countries.You can't make the society functional by banning money and property. But you can make your society functional if the government/police/secret services/judges will do their job.

Organized crime will exist any time there is a banned commodity that can be traded to accumulate private wealth.Organized crime will exist as long as the government and police is not doing their job, and as long as there is no strong regulations against organized crime, it's as simple as that. In "communist" countries there was no private property yet there was a lot of corruption.People also commit crime for sexual favors, food, vacations and so on. For example the physicians in communist countries were very happy to accept bribery in food products and other stuff, and it was a big thing, not isolated cases.Eliminating property won't eliminate corruption, crime and poverty - you should learn from such basic lessons of history.In North Korea there is no private property yet they are starving and they have lots of corruption. It's extremely naive to assume all the bad things there happen because they use money or private property.

Do you think criminals just phase into our world from some other dimension full of evil versions of ourselves?There are many possibilities. Maybe there is reincarnation. And then some people come with better learned lessons. It's a possibility. Or maybe some people are more primitive than others.

Criminals are created by society, just like philanthropists and regular johns are created by society.I agree, most of them do. That's why we need a functional society.

Quit whining about people blaming the wrong thing when you are doing precisely the same thing.I am not whining, I am just showing you that you blame the wrong things. And you should treat me the same, when I blame the wrong things, of course. Only by communicating we can learn from each other. That's so much better than pretending that I don't see your errors for your equal treatment in return.

If you eliminate money, then trading will be much more difficult.You talk about charlatans and people blindly following what they've been told, yet you assume that trade is a given.I can't produce everything I need and everything I wish: food, clothes, house, telephone, computer, internet, newspapers, etc. We must learn to cooperate and we have to trade in order to do that. I can't ask you to give me things for free, so I have to give you something in return for the things you give me. So we have to trade.

What is it about Samsung's smartphones that requires they be built in South Korea?Umm, they have an entire ecosystem that work closely with Samsung? They are part of a larger network of companies that work very efficient being part of the same culture and sharing many common values (like for example hard work).

Oh, that's right, the fact that they possess the "intellectual property" which excludes anyone but them from building that particular model of phone, and the private land and productive facilities that make it possible to construct the phone.They worked very hard to acquire that intellectual property. You can't ask someone to do research for free - scientists are not slaves. If you invest $10 million to invent something, then you might want to get your money back. You won't find many people to do research for you for free. It's not Samsung's fault that OSE has only 500 true fans to support open source technology while on a normal planet it should probably be 50 million. People can volunteer to invent technology but unfortunately they don't. So in this case it's very good that private companies invest in research - they pay those scientist who don't want to volunteer. But they have to get their money back - and they can do that by using intellectual property. Without investing to pay those scientist, you won't develop those technologies.

Technology can't be developed fast enough without an efficient currency.Um, you're posting on a web site developing open-source technology. Such irony cannot be intentional.Err, you mean OSE is not using money? :)If I remember correctly, I send $10 every month and I sent some $800 to OSE as one time donation. I thought we agreed that money is a currency.However, OSE is very slow comparing to Samsung, exactly for the reasons I posted above: there is too few people doing research for free. It would be awesome if OSE would have like $100 million to spend on research.I think you make a confusion: OSE is not a TVP (The Venus Project) subsidiary. OSE is something much better than TVP because it's acting, not just promoting wishful thinking of a guru who smokes crack.

We would have to return to a very primitive life.Would we? You've made quite the leap, going from "trade would be hard without money" to "we would have to live in a primative society if we didn't have money". Please delineate your train of thought and cite any sources for your factual assertions.My pleasure. With a difficult and expensive trade, it will be even much more difficult for average people in Africa to buy a computer and many other technology tools. That obviously means the humanity will go back to a more primitive state.

I don't know what you think Jacque Fresco thinks about money, but he definitely understands that ending the use of money alone is enough to fix the problems to which it contributes.If you ban money it doesn't mean you can program people to do research for free. It doesn't mean you can program what everyone wants. People want privilege, and that's why they need money and property. Privilege above all. In communist countries there was no private property but a lot of privilege! People find ways to do crimes in order to have privilege, regardless of using money/property or not. Sex, vacations, "protocol" houses (owned by the government ofc), personal drivers, slaves to clean the houses where they lived (who "worked for the government", ofc).No matter what regulations you have, people can break those rules. In Jacque Fresco's society, on paper, everyone will be free and enjoy a good life. But in reality, people can very well be slaves when the government/police will be corrupt and not do it's job.What can I say about someone who declares that there should not be prisons and police? He is smoking crack! How can you prevent people to commit crime for privilege without checking them?

You again consider others to be simple, while your posts are full of "absolute"s and "right"s and "wrong"s. Our understanding of reality is not absolute, nor is it right or wrong. See the problem of induction.I don't consider myself superior, I am just sad and scared of the fact that almost nobody wants to engage into building a better society. You should apply critical thinking and disseminate the information such gurus are pouring, since it defies the most basic common sense. If you repeat a nonsense, for me the best way to help you is to show you that you are wrong.

You should focus less of your efforts on insulting people and more actually opening your own thoughts to criticism, because it's pretty clear that you think you are some sagacious adept and everyone else here is a bunch of dumb sheep.I am open to criticism but I need to see proofs or at least indications, not absolutist statements from gurus. I am nobody's adept and also I have met here people here who think similar with me so I don't think everyone is dumb. sheep. I am sorry if I was too tough with you but if you would just allow yourself to be honestly critical with Jacque Fresco for only one day, then you would see that I'm a much better friend to you than Jacque Fresco. Indeed, I dislke gurus very much, because they promise to the people that the new system will fix everything for them. I am attacking the nonsense Jacque Fresco is pouring, I am not attacking you.

You're not. You aren't even bright enough to consider that efficient technological development can happen without moneyIt can but it's too slow on this planet. OSE should have at least 50 million supporters, then it would be acceptably fast.

while you're posting on a web site about open-source technologymaintained with money

probably in an open-source browserYes, Firefox - developed using money

probably using information you got from a crowdsourced encyclopediaan encyclopedia supported with money :D . I also send money to Wikipedia for example and I think that's wonderful

through a communications medium developed on open-source software.Developed by people who eat food they buy with money..

I'm pretty sure a 95-year-old man who spends all his time reading, designing, building, and discussing technology and the future is WAY more intelligent than you.He might very well be more intelligent than me but he definitely smokes crack. And he acts like a charlatan - there are many intelligent charlatans in this world, you know. He is no different than a politician: he tells you that the new system and the new ideology will fix everything for you. He doesn't ask you to engage into changing things. OSE is a project that is truly focused with resources in mind. If TVP is resource-based then why it didn't started any similar activity? He is talking (he talks, you listen) about the future, he is not discussing it. And he is not calling the people to BUILD the future.

and discussing technology the futureSee? here is the problem. The easiest way to detect an entity is genuine or not is to check how they communicate. Most of the organizations and charities and leaders and speakers in this world are talking just ONE WAY: They talk and you listen. Why you think he has no web forum? Umm... probably he doesn't care about what people think? Yes we need to create a resource based economy. There are many projects and many directions where we can start to take actions. We have to TALK about all those things, to group, and then to move to action. We don't need to only LISTEN to the guru who smokes crack. We have to do many many things. OSE is just one fragment of the whole thing. We also need to fight speculation for example. That will make the people to depend much less on money.

Funny, it seems that there are lots of things called "companies" which are large groups of people cooperating for a common goal.We don't need to be slaves of corporations. We need to make cooperatives. There is quite a lot of difference.

Then there's also this website you are posting on, where people are cooperating to develop industrial technologiesAnd they are so very few..

which they very cooperatively provide instructions for anyone else to build.That's not enough. There are people here who try to convince others that they have to buy an entire workshop if they want an open source washing machine. I dont want to spend $20,000 to make my own workshop, I just want to buy a $300 (or something like that) open source machine and when I need a component, I want to be able to buy it. So if OSE will deliver only designs then it will be a failure. OSE has to provide (sell) machines and parts so that the people can get used to using open source technology. For the moment I'm not even sure if OSE will implement the full solution.

And however, OSE is just a small fragment of the solution. But we have to talk about all solutions. I can't do everything but I can participate in 10-20 projects like OSE, with my money, time, energy, ideas, suggestions and so on.

That does not require the existence of private property. Why would someone take off my clothes whenever they feel like? If they had access to the clothing they need, they wouldn't.Your clothes are yours, so it's private property. In order for the people to have their own things they need, we must have a corruption-free society, not a money-free society.

However, I believe that the government should rent houses/apartments to the people, replacing the need to own a house.Oh, but then people would just take your house whenever they feel like it.No, because they can't take something from a functional government whenever they feel like it. If the government is renting houses, it doesn't mean it has to ban all the private property - it will just create a healthy alternative and positive balance to the private market.The solution is not on having or not having the private property. But the solution is into having good regulations and to enforce them. Nobody should be allowed to enter your house (private or rented) uninvited.

Capitalism is defined as a system in which resources are allocated privately to individual agents based on the market system. By definition, we live in capitalism. Your particular definition of captalism is not "true" capitalism just because you think that it works better that way. Capitalism is a well-defined concept, the criteria of which are met by our current social paradigm.I am talking about functional capitalism. Only a functional capitalism can be real. The way the capitalism was defined is not perfect. It must be adjusted to fit the needs of the society. But yes, I have seen people who struggle to keep the capitalism dysfunctional just because they want to preserve the "purity" of capitalism (applying it as it was defined in a poorly thought manner). The very definition of capitalism has to evolve because it's not perfect in the first place. We have to adjust the capitalism to make it functional, we don't have to make the people suffer just for preserving the "purity" of it's (idiotic) definition.And a definition of capitalism that doesn't include control of price fixing is of course, incomplete, dysfunctional, and therefore idiotic.

LG Display, Sharp, and Chunghwa Picture Tubes agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges for participating in a liquid crystal display price-fixing conspiracy and pay $585 million in fines - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10095219-92.htmlThat's a cartel, not a monopoly.Cartels and monopolies have the same goals: price fixing (speculation).

How do you propose to prevent the formation of cartels?Exactly like with measures like the one quoted above. The goal is not only to prevent cartels, but also to prevent speculation and price fixing, no mater who is doing it. On the real estate market, the price fixing is created by a large group of the population at the expese of the rest. Public housing can prevent such bubbles. Check Germany and Austria for example. Their unemployement diminished after the crisis started. And yes, they have good public housing, and houses are very cheap there, comparing to other countries!Unemployment rate in Europe (2002-2011): - http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?wai=true&dataset=une_rt_a

You mean like how there's tough regulations against organized crime, fraud, negligence, pollution, and other forms of socially irresponsible economic activity that happen all the time?Eliminating money and property won't eliminate such corruption. People will still enslave others, they will still have property, while on paper everything will look ok. The police, prosecutors, judges will close their eyes exactly the way they do now.

Really, how can you believe in such a charlatan who is teaching you that eliminating property will transform people into angels?

I do share my clothes, TV, and computer.You know that's not what I meant. It's your computer (private property) so you decide if you want to share it, no one else. I can't believe you can be happy if someone else uses your computer whenever they feel like, in the name of banning private property.

Do you think people are just constantly trying to enter my house, and the only thing stopping them is that I own the house? That's not how reality works.If it's not yours, then it's someone else property, therefore someone owns it. And that entity has exclusive rights, and can delegate the using rights to you.But in a society where nobody owns anything, random people can enter into the house where you live.

I'm talking about private property, not money. Private property requires a huge system of maintenance and control, like legal codes, court systems, police, prisons, banks, guards, fences, gates, alarms, lights, sensors, cameras, weapons, storage facilities, keys, and identities. All of these cost probably as much, if not more, than the value of the things they are supposed to be protecting.Money are the cheapest currency, and we started to talk about money in the first place. But ok, let's switch to private property:You need all those things legal codes, court systems, lights, etc. in any society. "Communists" also promised a life like in heaven like the one you are picturing but they also failed. Because a new system won't change people into angels. Corruption and crime still exists, with or without property. Because the people want privilege even before property. And you won't re-program the people by eliminating money and property. But you can educate them in a functional society.

Okay, so you don't even know what an externality is. Go read what externalities are before you try to argue with me about it.We were arguing about money, not about externalities :)And using a fuzzy language like "Externalizes or divides ecological considerations" doesn't help you to be more convincing, just more unintelligible.If your point is that money hurt ecology, then yes, you are wrong. It's the people's desire for privilege that hurts ecology.

Imbalanced access to resources is created by speculation and corruption.No, they're not. The first piece of land that was enclosed (made from commons into private property) created the very first imbalance of access to resources. One person had exclusive access to that piece of land, while everyone else had no access to it. Speculation did not exist for thousands of years afterward.In the beginning there was plenty of land and without speculation, the prices of land were decent, so the property was not the real problem. However in the Middle Ages, the majority had no right to own land, first of all (Serfdom). It was a small elite enslaving the vast majority. It was the desire of power and privilege that made them to enslave others. Property is just a tool for them to satisfy the desire of power and privilege. Find a more efficient tool for them to satisfy their goals and they will forget about private property and will use the new tool.However, the government should rent land to the people, not sell it. Everyone should be able to rent land from the government if they want. A patch of land big enough to produce enough food but not bigger than that. If they want more land, then they should buy from the free market. That would also prevent speculation and market bubbles. But that doesn't mean private property should be eliminated.

As for "corruption", define "corruption" and explain the differences between corruption and normal acquisition of private resources.Ok I will do it but you will also have to answer my questions and define therms I am asking you to define.Corruption has many forms. For example the you convince the people in the government to give only to you the license to have a mill. Then you can fix the prices. For milling 10 tons of wheat you charge 9 tons instead of 0.5 tons. So you have monopoly and fix the price. The government officials are corrupt and you share the wheat with them. This is one of the most common form of corruption. That's how price of rice is bigger in Philipines than in Denmark. And Philippines is exporting rice to Denmark.Now, normal acquisition of private resources implies the government is not corrupt, and they give mill license to others who want it. Then you have competition. Then you have to give a fair price for milling. Then you get only 0.5 tons of wheat for milling 10 tons, and that is "normal". The price you charge is determined by the amount of work and energy spent for the service you provide. That's how it works in a healthy economy, free of corruption and free of speculation.

The penalty must be for monopoly, price fixing and speculation.1. There are natural mon-/olig-opolies that will exist whether or not you "penalize" them.Yes, but in a better economic environment, they have to charge a fair price, they pay penalties for abusing dominant position for price fixing and for making cartels, and also they have to give money back to the people they overcharged. So, in a real, functional capitalism, they can't hurt people, because the government won't let them hurt the people.Cooperatives can also fix the prices and create cartels. Therefore the solution comes not from the ideology (communism/capitalism) but the solution comes from good regulations and from enforcing the rules.

2. Penalties do not prevent entirely a behavior from being exhibited.Penalties can be big enough so the monopoly won't play with fire again. The penalty can be in returning money to clients. The company can be split (see AT&T case) or it can even be dissolved if that's necessary. With a functional government, the monopolies can't hurt the people.

3. You are entirely ignoring my point about the fact that wealth accretion is always rewarded in increasing amounts, in order to continue rambling about the same shit you've already repeated dozens of times.LOL look who is talking! It's you that repeat the same nonsense blaming the gun instead of the criminal! You don't need to eliminate money and property in order to give to the people a better education and to reduce criminality. Criminality in New Zealand (capitalist) is much lower than say Venezuela (communist), and it has nothing to do with existence of money or property.Wealth accretion is always rewarded in increasing amounts because privilege and hidden property is always rewarded in increasing amounts. If the system is eliminating property, it doesn't mean the property won't exist anymore. Some people will still have hidden property and they will use it to bribe others who also want hidden property.

There is no need for speculation.No shit, that's what I wrote in that thing you are supposedly responding to.You are indoctrinated that capitalism can't exist without speculation. Look what you said above: "Capitalism can't work without speculation, either."You must "prove" somehow that capitalism is evil so you insist suggesting that capitalism can't exist without speculation. My answer was that capitalism doesn't need speculation, and also we don't need speculation at all, in any kind of society, either communist or capitalist. By the contrary, capitalism can't function while speculation exists.

Dude, seriously, you are not having a discussion here. All you're doing is reiterating one point, which you have not really supported with any reasoning or evidence, and then acting like we're all a bunch of twits for not agreeing (not even disagreeing) with you. I would like to maintain civility on this forum, but f___ __u.No worries, I was quite tough in my last post so it's no problem.I was giving lots of indications and evidence, reality facts, links, reality described by someone in Africa, etc.It's not my fault that you believe in a charlatan and that you want to believe in a miraculous solution (money are evil so we eliminate money and then all problems are gone).

If Jacque Fresco is an honest man, then why he doesn't even have a web forum? Why he doesn't care about people's ideas, suggestions and questions?He can't answer to all questions but at least he can answer to the most popular questions. He should answer questions in a public space, so everyone can see the answers.People might have good suggestions and they might find each other to start activities.

Because he is just like Osho, Muktananda, Babaji & co: a guru who wants followers.

I am your friend and the guru is the enemy of your mind. The guru is not answering to your questions and he is not interested to debate with you. But I am.

gonzo, you have way to much time on your hands to write so much, well, nonsense.

LOL, you can trade potatoes for other goods and services. Monkeys trade fruits for sexual favors for example. In rural subsistence economies, people pay with food and raw material instead of money. You can trade surplus potatoes for someone else's surplus. Of course you won't trade the potatoes you need to eat, you only trade the surplus!!We are talking about speculation in the dimension which threatens our economy, environment and civilisation, not small scale local barter. For this speculation you need money as the tool to allow for it. You surely know that nearly 99% of speculation is done via computers shifting Dollars around, not via real world goods? How do you want to do that without money?

Absolutely false. It's like you blame the gun instead of blaming the criminal. Money are better currency than potatoes and that's all. It's just a more efficient instrument. A criminal can kill with with a rock, with a club, or with a knife. But it's insane to blame the knife instead of blaming the criminal. Sure, the criminal can kill faster with a knife, because it's more efficient but a knife is just a tool.And here we were talking about greed, not about money.

The mills charge many times in corn/wheat instead of charging in money. So if you take 10 tons of wheat to the mill, and instead of charging you a decent price (let's say 100 kg), the mill owner will charge you 9 tons of wheat. Therefore for 10 tons of wheat, you get only 1 ton of wheat flour, when you should get 9.9 tons. That is price fixing. The mill owner can do that because he is connected with the government / police and no one else can get a license to make a mill in that area. That's how corruption works and that's how it generates monopoly, speculation and price fixing, driving the people poor. You don't have to involve money into that.Absolutely true. But that is just crime. As soon as someone else builds a second mill, this won't work anymore. If a society is governed by fist law, any common sense is gone, and you can even organize price fixing based on wheat. But that is not what we are talking about here, and you know it. Money is not the reason for any and all of today's crimes, and never was. But for the vast majority of it. Just because there still will be rape without any money involved is no reason to take away the reason for 80% or 90% of all other crimes: Substituting for missing money, or trying to acquire more money.

Absolute nonsense. If only you are allowed to produce potatoes (the corrupt govt only gives you the license), you can fix it's price as you wish. You can ask 100 kg of wheat for 1 kg a potato, instead of 1 kg of wheat for 1 kg of potato. So the price doesn't only depend of the time and effort to make it.Would you mind try to think about things others write or say? I was describing a way price is measured, not a way how price is fixed. It does not make sense to replace any currency of the world just with a different or new currency which works just the same way. So think about "measuring" of worth instead of "fixing" worth, and you might find some insight. It seems, thinking out of the box is impossible to you. You apply all your leaned categorizations and parameters to new ideas, not realizing, that the new idea can infact just change said categorizations and parameters. You can't imagine something replacing the concept of money, you are as convinced that money is the holy grail as creationists are convinced that their god has put dinosaur bones into the earth just for a laugh.

Obviously, you think the drug dealer who has just pocketed 100 bucks from the kid would just happily accept 200 pounds of potatoes instead, right ... Of course, he has that big secret storage facility outside of town with all the tonnage of potatoes, tomatoes and baseball caps, from which he sends 80% of it every week to the drug baron in Florida, who again owns a giant fleet of ships travelling from the US to Colombia bringing all that food to cartels over there as payment for their products. And the Colombians of course pay the local Mercedes dealer with a few tons of now 2 months old tomatoes and very ripe potatoes for his new car. But wait, the Colombians are not dumb! They don't want the potatoes, they want the Mercedes! So the Floridian drug baron brings the potatoes and tomatos to the Miami Mercedes dealer and buys the car with that and sends the car to Colombia, reducing the tonnage of produce slightly. Or see that investment banker who gets his annual bonus of 25 tons of apples for his succesful operations like this one today, where he moves some 125 shiploads of wheat from Chicago to London and 10 seconds later that same load from London to Hongkong and another minute later from Hongkong to Rotterdam, all for a whopping profit of 25,000 pumpkins! I see, you have thought it all through ...

Well, if you want that all these things are supported, just stick with money. Take the money out of it, than try to find a way how to make screwing over everybody and raising giant profits not only possible, but feasible. When you start to realize that money is the main reason to make a lot of injustice and suffering in today's time possible and feasible, you may begin to think how we could serve the trading needs of our civilisation with something different then money.

gonzo, I give you a tipp how to improve your reasoning: Read Schopenhauer's "Art of Controversy". Ironically, you don't even need money to get it, and legally so! You may find some a lot better and more elegant ways to fight for a lost cause.

We are talking about speculation in the dimension which threatens our economy, environment and civilisation, not small scale local barter. For this speculation you need money as the tool to allow for it. You surely know that nearly 99% of speculation is done via computers shifting Dollars around, not via real world goods? How do you want to do that without money?You don't need to eliminate money in order to eliminate speculation. The government can simply prevent speculation. I proved it above. And anyways, the speculation that created the economic crisis was not done with computers shifting money around. It was done by allowing real estate speculation. Germany and Austria had no real estate speculation and they had no crisis. The speculation with the basic necessities of life (water, food, house, etc) hurts the most.

Absolutely true. But that is just crime. As soon as someone else builds a second mill, this won't work anymore.That's crime in the form of price fixing. Doesn't matter if it's encoded by law, it's still a crime.But I was talking about corruption there, not just crime: The government decides to give license only to you and then no one else can make a second mill. That's how monopoly is maintained by corrupt governments. And it doesn't have to involve money.

If a society is governed by fist law, any common sense is gone, and you can even organize price fixing based on wheat.Most of the poor countries are governed by fist law: African countries, Belarus (dictator Lukashenko), Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, etc etc etc. They will be corrupt with or without money. So there is no miraculous / mystical solution like Jacques Fresco wants you to believe.

Money is not the reason for any and all of today's crimes, and never was. But for the vast majority of it.I guess you believe the same thing about private property, right?Most of the domestic violence is done by men who get drunk.Do you really believe that Russia had less domestic violence when they were "communist" and had no private property? Do you really believe that men getting drunk has anything to do with private property or with money? You can't be so naive. It's only about alcohol and education.

Just because there still will be rape without any money involved is no reason to take away the reason for 80% or 90% of all other crimes: Substituting for missing money, or trying to acquire more money.Criminals need money and private property in order to get privilege. If the government eliminates them both, then the people will still desire privilege and they will acquire private property that they will hide (hidden private property). With enough corruption, the criminal groups will get as much privilege and hidden property as they like, while on paper it will look like they have no property or privilege. In the "communist" countries, there was a lot of corruption and poverty. The government was educating the people that property is bad, but with no effect. Jacques Fresco's society will be the same: people will be educated that the property is bad, but they will do their best to get privilege and property. Children are not only educated by the community, but also by their parents, who love privilege.

You can't imagine something replacing the concept of money, you are as convinced that money is the holy grail as creationists are convinced that their god has put dinosaur bones into the earth just for a laugh.Wrong. I have no real problem to live without money. I just understand that eliminating money/property won't solve anything. On the other hand, you want to believe that there is a miraculous solution, and you want to believe that blaming the gun instead of the criminal will solve anything. The solution is not a new ideology or a new system, but the solution is in the people who must make sure the abuses will not be tolerated.

Obviously, you think the drug dealer who has just pocketed 100 bucks from the kid would just happily accept 200 pounds of potatoes instead, right ... Of course, he has that big secret storage facility outside of town with all the tonnage of potatoes, tomatoes and baseball caps, from which he sends 80% of it every week to the drug baron in Florida, who again owns a giant fleet of ships travelling from the US to Colombia bringing all that food to cartels over there as payment for their products.No. But he will search for the most efficient currency, like for example diamonds or gold. They will trade it illegally.

And the Colombians of course pay the local Mercedes dealer with a few tons of now 2 months old tomatoes and very ripe potatoes for his new car.No, they will pay with gold. Or if the Germans want wheat, they will pay in wheat. Or even with fresh potatoes/tomatoes.

Or see that investment banker who gets his annual bonus of 25 tons of apples for his succesful operations like this one today, where he moves some 125 shiploads of wheat from Chicago to London and 10 seconds later that same load from London to Hongkong and another minute later from Hongkong to Rotterdam, all for a whopping profit of 25,000 pumpkins! I see, you have thought it all through ...As criminals do, they will do their best to find the best currency: precious metals, jewelry, even drugs, etc. And the criminals are extremely inventive by the way! Or they will use the currency of the last country that has money. They will always find a solution to trade what they are stealing.

Well, if you want that all these things are supported, just stick with money. Take the money out of it, than try to find a way how to make screwing over everybody and raising giant profits not only possible, but feasible.Criminals have are much more resourceful than you or me into inventing ways to trade stolen goods. Germany is using money and their criminality is lower than US, and they had no crisis. So you must be blind not to see that it's not about money. They just have better prevention of speculation and that's all. They will even create their own country with it's own money or an "underground" country or they will make their own money from precious metal. They are inventive beyond limits!

When you start to realize that money is the main reason to make a lot of injustice and suffering in today's time possible and feasible, you may begin to think how we could serve the trading needs of our civilisation with something different then money.I am never going to realize that because I don't plan to believe in a guru who promotes a miraculous solution.

You are much better than Jacques Fresco because, unlike him, you answer to questions and you do debate ideas.But he doesn't want to answer the questions in a (archived) public space, like a web forum, blog, or web site. He doesn't want to talk with you. He just wants you to listen and follow him.Ya mon, fallaw da leader, fallaw da leader leader..

TVP should have started projects like OSE since years ago - OSE is a step forward towards a resource based economy. But they don't. Because they just spread the philosophy of their guru and nothing else.

I agree that we have to live in a resource based economy. But that has nothing to do with the mystic solution of eliminating money or property. The solution is for the government to offer access to resources to everyone. The government should rent land and houses to the people. Then the speculation can't even affect the people. You won't be affected by speculation of luxury watches or paintings of Rembrandt since you don't need those things in order to survive and to live decent.

Can I ask you a few questions:Do you agree that the economic crisis was created by the housing market bubble?Do you agree that price fixing and speculation can be prevented?Do you understand that good public housing can prevent a housing market bubble? People won't be affected by increasing house prices if they can rent a house from the government at a decent price.Do you understand that the government can rent land to the people at very cheap or even for free, so the unemployed and the poor can make their own food?Do you understand that the government can make state-owned companies that give work to the unemployed people? The Norway government has a lot of such companies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-owned_corporation#Summary

thanks

tip: before adding the text to the form, copy it into a Notepad window and then copy it from there in the form here. Then it won't break the lines into those ugly columns

Oh, and by the way, I am really glad that we could agree at least on some things.

See? This is the kind of nonsense the "gurus" are pouring. Absolutist statements like "any system which .. will be identical". Apply some critical thinking, and then you will see such statements are rubbish. There is no decent proof or indication to sustain such statements.

I am a company and I want to maximize my profits. There is an establishment called the state which regulates the market. That establishment is run by people who need money to survive. I have lots of money, but I want more. What do I do? I pay people in the government to pass regulations that are favorable to me and detrimental to my competitors.If all it takes is "critical thinking" to see such statements are "rubbish", then it should be pretty easy for you to explain the line of reasoning from which you arrived at that conclusion.

If what I'm saying is "rubbish", then why is every capitalist state becoming increasingly fascist? Why does every single capitalist state in history have corruption?Oh right, monopolies and speculation, huh.

Money are just a currency. Replace money with another currency and the people will still commit crime in order to get the new currency. Even if you replace money with data in computer memory, they will still do crime in order to rewrite those computer memories.

You're supporting my argument, not yours. Remember what you've been asserting?Yet it's the first world capitalist states who are making the biggest efforts for using green energySo you are wrong in your logic somehow, isn't it?Even though it is those capitalist states who are making even bigger efforts to spread disinformation about the danger of fossil fuels, the amount of fossil fuels that exist, the reality of climate change, the reality of ocean acidification, and the reality of mass extinction, as well as it being the first-world capitalist states whose industrial economies caused the problem in the first place.If you ban property in your country, the organized crime will keep doing it's job and will save the money into bank accounts in Switzerland.How would organized crime continue if there is no money to make?

Organized crime will exist as long as the government and police is not doing their job,Organized crime exists in part because the government and police can be manipulated by a universal trade good that everyone needs to survive.and as long as there is no strong regulations against organized crime, it's as simple as that.I'm pretty sure there's strong regulations against organized crime. You know, since organized crime is organized crime, and not organized shady business.In "communist" countries there was no private property yet there was a lot of corruption.In "communist" countries there was state property, which is a type of private property, in which the private party is the state.

It's extremely naive to assume all the bad things there happen because they use money or private property.But it's not naive to assume all the bad things happen because of monopolies, price fixing, and speculation. By the way, at no point did I assume or imply that all bad things are the result of private property. Just a sizeable portion of the bad things that happen as a result of economic inefficiency.

I agree, most of them do. That's why we need a functional society.Sweet, so let's create something almost identical to most historical societies that were just as rampant with crime, deprivation, and violence.

I can't produce everything I need and everything I wish: food, clothes, house, telephone, computer, internet, newspapers, etc. We must learn to cooperate and we have to trade in order to do that. You only have to trade if certain people are excluded from accessing certain things. If nobody owns anything, why would you need to trade?You are assuming the validity of the paradigm in which only certain people are allowed to have certain things. A concept which has existed for the minority of human history.

I can't ask you to give me things for free, so I have to give you something in return for the things you give me.Open-source is giving things away for free.

Umm, they have an entire ecosystem that work closely with Samsung?Why doesn't Samsung just release CAD files for their hardware, and code for their software? Then, anyone with photolitho equipment, plastic forming equipment, and a sputtering machine can make a Galaxy S III.

They worked very hard to acquire that intellectual property.No they didn't. Lots of people worked to iteratively develop electronic and communications technology, and Samsung just designed a particular implementation of it, which largely copies lots of design elements from lots of other companies.They didn't "acquire" anything, since intellectual "property" doesn't actually exist.

You can't ask someone to do research for free - scientists are not slaves.I do research for free. RepRappers do research for free. Lots of the most important scientists in history not only did research for free, but died poor and shunned by society.

If you invest $10 million to invent something, then you might want to get your money back.Uh, duh, if you assume that investment is required to invent something as well as to survive, then yes, I will probably want to get my money back. Of course, I'm working on a project to make low-cost, patterned graphene, and will be putting my own money into it without expecting a return. It would be nice, but I really don't care, because I would much rather make the technology available to anyone than to make money off of it.So in this case it's very good that private companies invest in researchYeah, but it would be far better if monetary investment wasn't required to carry out research, and in fact it would cause way more research to actually occur.

Err, you mean OSE is not using money?Do you have to pay OSE to build LifeTrac? Do you have to pay Linus Torvalds to use Linux? Do you have to pay Richard Stallman to use GNU software? Would OSE need to use money if they were not excluded from access to the materials and necessities they need to continue working?

My pleasure. With a difficult and expensive trade, it will be even much more difficult for average people in Africa to buy a computer and many other technology tools. That obviously means the humanity will go back to a more primitive state.How do you propose that someone BUYS a computer in a society without money or trade? How many Africans do you actually think are BUYING computers, considering that almost all malnutrition occurs in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Why is TRADE required for people to access technology? You are so locked in to the idea of property that you are literally incapable of thinking outside of that frame of reference.

So, let me rephrase the question: If all things on Earth were accessible to all people at no cost to themselves, what is it about that type of society that would prevent us from having advanced technology?

If you ban money it doesn't mean you can program people to do research for free.The fact that you continually use the phrase "ban money" means you have absolutely no understanding of the argument at hand. At no point have I advocated BANNING money. At many points have I advocating ENDING the use of money in favor of systems that work better than money, but you seem to simply ignore that. I'm starting to think that you care less about having a discussion and more about spreading disinformation.

No matter what regulations you have, people can break those rules. In Jacque Fresco's society, on paper, everyone will be free and enjoy a good life. But in reality, people can very well be slaves when the government/police will be corrupt and not do it's job."Jacque Fresco's society" does not include regulations, government, or police. What is your understanding of how "Jacque Fresco's society" works?

I don't consider myself superiorSure, you just think that no one else, not even Nobel Prize winners or "communist leaders" have ever espoused the thoughts that you have listed here, and that yours is the only possible way to run society, and that all other ideas are rubbish. Meanwhile, you insult others and make yourself out to be the superior intelligence here, on Occupy Wall Street, and pretty much any other person you address. Everything me and Raban say is "absolute nonsense", while your ideas are so airtight and simple they bear no need for support or detailed explanation.

I am just sad and scared of the fact that almost nobody wants to engage into building a better society.Thinking you are superior to others. Appeal to emotion. Attempted division of the community.You should apply critical thinking and disseminate the information such gurus are pouring, since it defies the most basic common sense.Thinking you are superior to others. Attempting to discredit others. Making alternative thinkers out to be "kooks" and religious gurus.If you repeat a nonsense, for me the best way to help you is to show you that you are wrong.Yes, everything I say is just repeating the ideas of others, but your ideas are so unique that no other person in the world shares them. Not only that, but we are all poor peons that need your help to see the error of our ways.

I am open to criticismReally? Because every time I criticize something you say, you insist that my criticism is "rubbish" without actually explaining the logical error, and that everything you say is totally obvious and common sense. "Common sense" is an underhanded way of closing your ideas off from question. An idea that is not open to question is called "dogma".

I am sorry if I was too tough with you but if you would just allow yourself to be honestly critical with Jacque Fresco for only one day, then you would see that I'm a much better friend to you than Jacque FrescoMy ideas have no dependence on Jacque Fresco, and your assumption that I am uncritical of his ideas is very condescending and assuming of you. Meanwhile, you refuse to question the validity of the private property paradigm, which is not a criticism exclusive to Jacque Fresco by any means; instead you avoid the question by acting as if I have been talking only about money, except when it is convenient for you, or when you can make it a straw man. Every response I read from you makes you look increasingly like COIN. Attempting to discredit others, attempting to get in my good graces, inconsistent statements, simulated emotions.

It can but it's too slow on this planet. OSE should have at least 50 million supporters, then it would be acceptably fast.Yeah, a project that just started a few years ago doesn't have at least 50 million supporters, therefore technological development cannot happen without money. Brilliant conclusion from a brilliant premise. Wait, no, not brilliant. The other thing. Vacuous.

maintained with moneyOut of necessity, not advantage.

an encyclopedia supported with moneyThat it gets from donations that it has to constantly beg for. Again, out of necessity, not advantage. Kind of like how your arguments are supported with straw men, out of necessity.

Developed by people who eat food they buy with money..Out of necessity, not advantage. This is like arguing with a 12-year-old, seriously. Of course they USE money, they HAVE TO because their survival is contigent on it. However, there is no argument that you have made thus far that demonstrates the necessity of money to technological development. By your logic, more money should equal superior technology, but it doesn't. Microsoft has far more money than the Mozilla Foundation, yet its browser is vastly inferior.

He might very well be more intelligent than me but he definitely smokes crack.And you are definitely a shill. Have fun with your counterintelligence operations, I'm going to do something productive, instead.

"Obviously, you think the drug dealer who has just pocketed 100 bucks from the kid would just happily accept 200 pounds of potatoes instead, right ... Of course, he has that big secret storage facility outside of town with all the tonnage of potatoes, tomatoes and baseball caps, from which he sends 80% of it every week to the drug baron in Florida, who again owns a giant fleet of ships travelling from the US to Colombia bringing all that food to cartels over there as payment for their products. And the Colombians of course pay the local Mercedes dealer with a few tons of now 2 months old tomatoes and very ripe potatoes for his new car. But wait, the Colombians are not dumb! They don't want the potatoes, they want the Mercedes! So the Floridian drug baron brings the potatoes and tomatos to the Miami Mercedes dealer and buys the car with that and sends the car to Colombia, reducing the tonnage of produce slightly. Or see that investment banker who gets his annual bonus of 25 tons of apples for his succesful operations like this one today, where he moves some 125 shiploads of wheat from Chicago to London and 10 seconds later that same load from London to Hongkong and another minute later from Hongkong to Rotterdam, all for a whopping profit of 25,000 pumpkins! I see, you have thought it all through ..."

This is probably the funniest thing I have read all week. Thank you, Rabert.

I am a company and I want to maximize my profits. There is an establishment called the state which regulates the market. That establishment is run by people who need money to survive. I have lots of money, but I want more. What do I do? I pay people in the government to pass regulations that are favorable to me and detrimental to my competitors.You don't have to pay the people in the government with money. You can pay them wiht gold, diamonds, jewelry, sexual favors. Say you own a illegal brothel. You charge gold or even food for sex. You bribe the government people with sex favors and with products: gold, food or whatever else you use for trade. Say you own slaves (you threat you kill them if they won't work for you for free). Then you bribe the people in the government with a part of the products the slaves create for you: food, clothes, electronics, etc. Or you trade the products for any illegal currency and then you share it with the people in the government. Eliminate money and the organized crime will find another currency.

If all it takes is "critical thinking" to see such statements are "rubbish", then it should be pretty easy for you to explain the line of reasoning from which you arrived at that conclusion.First of all, it defies common sense. Second, there is no real evidence that "any system which .. will be identical".

If what I'm saying is "rubbish", then why is every capitalist state becoming increasingly fascist? Why does every single capitalist state in history have corruption?Oh right, monopolies and speculation, huh.They have corruption because people want privilege, property and hidden property. Many politicians in capitalist states have bank accounts in Switzerland, money/gold in their backyard, or some other (remote) properties they don't declare.Monopolies and cartels are just a facet of corruption. But in USA the corruption is much lower than say Nigeria. The economic crisis was generated directly by real estate speculation. I am really tired to have to repeat that since you don't want to acknowledge it. Yes, Germany had no real estate speculation and they had no crisis. Their capitalism is much more functional because it's reinforced by socialist measures which in turn prevent speculation. But I'm tired to repeat what you refuse to acknowledge.

Before answering your statements I have to answer you a few things.

1. Why do you think US govt. split AT&T into smaller companies in 1984? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Bell2. Why do you think US govt. is forcing companies to pay penalties for abusing dominant market position and for creating monopolies and cartels? See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung#Price_cartels3. Do you understand that there are also average and even rich people who support communism? They can sponsor creation of cooperatives. I would also be also happy to support such cooperatives.4. Why do you think no communist speaker is calling the people to build cooperatives?5. Do you understand that abuses can happen in any society and that it's only the people who can prevent abuses? Therefore the solution is not in the system but it's in the people.

thanks

And I'm sorry for using a language too tough in the previous post. I don't consider you to be inferior, I am just angry that a charlatan can trick young and resourceful people like you to believe in magic solutions.

The fact that you continually use the phrase "ban money" means you have absolutely no understanding of the argument at hand. At no point have I advocated BANNING money. At many points have I advocating ENDING the use of money in favor of systems that work better than money, but you seem to simply ignore that.Then why don't you, the supporters of TVP, start your own community where you end using money? People like me would be very interested to send you some money in order for you to buy your own land/tools so you can make your products. And then you won't need to use money anymore. It's a very interesting experiment from my point of view. OSE is a step forward towards a resource based economy. Why TVP is not doing such steps? Why TVP supporters are not putting into practice their own philosophy?

Of course, people like you can create a functional community but they can do it because they are honest, not because they are not using money. With or without money, their society will be more or less the same. But anyways, why they are not doing it?

Do you agree that the economic crisis was created by the housing market bubble?

No. The housing crisis was just the drop which let the keg overflow. The economic crisis is a mathematical consequence of fiat money use. Fiat money must collapse every 60 to 70 years the latest. The USD started to become fiat when Nixon ended Bretton-Woods some 40 years ago. The Dollar is rapidly approaching its expiration date. That, by the way, is the reason why the Euro is so much worse off. The underlying money to the Euro was all fiat and as of today 50 to 60 years old. We are even closer to our expiration date. When you think we have an economic crisis, then I'm curious what you will call the situation in 10 to 20 years the latest. Compared to what will come, today's economic crisis is just a hick-up.

Do you agree that price fixing and speculation can be prevented?Yes, both can be outlawed by governments. But since governments are the abettors of our global plutocracy which feeds from price fixing and speculation, this will not happen.

Do you understand that good public housing can prevent a housing market bubble? People won't be affected by increasing house prices if they can rent a house from the government at a decent price.Of course. Ideally, providing housing should be on the service list of government. What is a government worth, which cannot even provide housing for its people? When housing is taken from the market because it is not longer a traded commodity, but a public service, you can't have a bubble anymore.

Do you understand that the government can rent land to the people at very cheap or even for free, so the unemployed and the poor can make their own food?Sure, but for that government would need to own the land. I understand that in the US lots of acreage is rented out to farmers, ranchers and homesteaders across the country, what we don't have in Europe at all. In Europe some people discuss changing the law that local authorities will have a right of preemption when land is sold, what is virtually the only way to provide land to the people, after most public owners of land and housing have sold their assets to (mostly American) investors over the past decades.Do you understand that the government can make state-owned companies that give work to the unemployed people?To give work to the unemployed is not the problem. Actually there is more then enough work for all especially in public and social sectors. To be able to pay them is the problem. And the law, where it prevents the state to compete to privatly owned companies. Actually, in Germany we are trying something like that. People who are living on social welfare can be required to do public work. These jobs are called 1-Euro-jobs, because they get a payment of 1 Euro per hour for it. If they are called to do it, they have to react on short notice and have no right to refuse the job unless to get cuts on their already low welfare. They are even discussing to train those people to work as child care workers or care assistants for the elderly. What is a bit surreal, when you see the education, attitude and social competence of most of this longtime jobless people they want to get off the streets with this idea.On the other topics, I think we can agree that we disagree.

Just one more thing for you to think of: Do you know how much gold there is in the world? If we could free half of the worlds gold to be used for money, we would look at something like 1/3 oz per person. One time. Once spend, it is gone. And of course, it would not be distributed evenly. The rich would have gold in kilos, while 90% of the people would have 1/10 oz when they are lucky, and half of the planet would have just a little speck of gold. With silver it is even worse. Diamonds and other so-called precious stones are not usable for that anymore, because they can be artificially made in any number now, and no one but high tech equiped specialists can seperate the true deal from the falsifications.

Since I am dealing with this ideas for some decades already, I eventually stumbled over Jacque Fresco a few years ago and know a bit about his Venus Project. Just for the records: I think that he is much to technocratic and his vision is much to complicated and elaborate to be realized anytime soon. His ideas how to shift our civilization into his proposed version is simply not feasilby at all.

Jacque Fresco has been for me, one of the most inspiring visionaries of our time. That is just a personal statement of course, but it could be pointed out that most visionaries are not around to see their ideas manifest. His ideas ARE amazing in there implications for human civilization, and yet if they do come to pass it may very well be a couple hundred years from now. I find it important not to get caught up in the impossibility of an idea. If it inspires, that is enough. Inspiration can have a domino effect over time that may bring about the very thing that caused the inspiration in the first place.

The economic crisis is a mathematical consequence of fiat money use.But the prices of the houses increased, the people could not afford to buy/rent them anymore, and then the housing market collapsed. The people working in constructions (many!) lost their jobs. The retirement funds invested heavily into real estate so they collapsed too. In Spain for example the people would like to retire at the age of 40 if possible, at the expense of the young people.The financial crisis of 2007–2010 was related to the bursting of real estate bubbles around the world, which had begun during the 2000s. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_estate_bubbleIt's a fact that the crisis was an effect of the housing market bubble.

Do you agree that price fixing and speculation can be prevented?Yes, both can be outlawed by governments. But since governments are the abettors of our global plutocracy which feeds from price fixing and speculation, this will not happen.Sorry but you are wrong. Germany and Austria prevented speculation with such a basic commodity and people could afford to rent a house. Since they could afford to rent from the government at a decent price, there was no reason for them to pay inflated prices when they were buying houses. I suspect Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Finland and Norway also have good public housing. And they also don't have an economic crisis!That's how they prevented speculation. So this kind of things happen as we speak.However, if the governments are the abettors of (global) plutocracy, then they can maintain monopoly, price fixing and speculation, even in a money free society, as you admitted above (societies runned by the fist law).

Do you understand that good public housing can prevent a housing market bubble? People won't be affected by increasing house prices if they can rent a house from the government at a decent price.Of course. Ideally, providing housing should be on the service list of government.I glad that we can agree on this.

What is a government worth, which cannot even provide housing for its people?Perfect question. I have another, similar question: If the government is not helping it's people to survive, then why we need a government? A government has an army because it's supposed to defend it's own people.Therefore the government should rent houses (not subsidized but at decent price) and it should rent land to the people so they can make their own food. If the people starve, we can't say the government is doing it's job and we can agree that it doesn't even have a reason to exist.

When housing is taken from the market because it is not longer a traded commodity, but a public service, you can't have a bubble anymore.Well, If the government has a decent share of the real estate market (let's say somewhere between 10-30%), then it can rent those houses to the poor and to the average people. A good percent of the people get houses from their parents. Others are just rich and can afford to buy. And when the people can rent from the government at decent price, the prices can't go up on the private real estate market. And if they go up, it won't affect the average people. You are not affected by the price inflation of luxury houses, nor yachts, nor luxury watches. Only the speculation with the basic necessities of life can affect you. The rest can be speculated without problem.Therefore, the government doesn't have to own all the housing market, just a healthy part of it. If some people are poor, have no jobs and can't affort to pay a rent, then they should pay with work since they don't have jobs and have free time.

I understand that in the US lots of acreage is rented out to farmers, ranchers and homesteaders across the country, what we don't have in Europe at all. In Europe some people discuss changing the law that local authorities will have a right of preemption when land is sold, what is virtually the only way to provide land to the people, after most public owners of land and housing have sold their assets to (mostly American) investors over the past decades.If the people starve, the government should even force some owners to sell, in order to give land to people so they can make their own food. If it can't even help people to survive, then the government is not needed at all. Not everyone is poor in a country. Let's say 20% of people in Spain are poor, have no jobs and can't survive. Then the government only have to rent land to those people, not to everyone. That means that again, the government doesn't have to own all the land, just a healthy part of the total land in a country, so it can use it to protect it's people from abuses of the rich.

Therefore, it is possible to protect the people in front of an economic crisis, and it's quite simple for a government to do it, with or without money.

Actually there is more then enough work for all especially in public and social sectors. To be able to pay them is the problem.But the government can simply rent land to the people, those people can make food for themselves, and they sell the surplus for clothes, construction materials, water, internet etc. So it won't have to bother about those people too much anymore.For the rest of the people, the government can give them jobs in order to produce things: houses, clothes, food, etc. Then, even in the worst case, it won't even have to pay them: it can give them a part of their work.

And the law, where it prevents the state to compete to privately owned companies.When the people's survival is at stake, that law can be simply changed, don't you think? The people must have the opportunity to create the basic necessities of life. If the private sector fails to give jobs to the people to create basic necessities of life, then the government HAS TO give them that chance. The government is supposed to help it's people to survive, first of all. The people's need to survive is much more important than a law that protects the rich.

These jobs are called 1-Euro-jobs, because they get a payment of 1 Euro per hour for it. If they are called to do it, they have to react on short notice and have no right to refuse the job unless to get cuts on their already low welfare. They are even discussing to train those people to work as child care workers or care assistants for the elderly.I heard about it. The people work for private companies, the company pays the people 1 Euro and the government pays the rest. Am I right?But the people should work directly for the government. Then the government won't have to pay anything to private companies. It would only pay the people with a part of their work. Sell the products they make and give them the money. Or - give them directly products. So it is possible to create a resource-based economy and quite easy.

Well, you say you are from Germany, if possible please tell me what you know about public housing in Germany. And I would like to know if Germany had it's own crisis and how much it affected the population.

World Food Programme is giving food to the poor for free. I think they should buy land and rent it to the poor, so they can make their own food.Habitat for Humanity is selling houses at very cheap to the poor (a fraction of the cost to build them), after investing lots of money to make them. If they would be honest, they would rent houses to the poor, for money and work. The benefit from rent should go to create more houses until everyone can rent one.Ayuda en Acción (a partner of ActionAid) is making cooperatives in poor countries and after a number of years (I think 15) is leaving the cooperatives exclusively in the hands of those poor. If they would be honest, they would keep those cooperatives, so a part of their profit will go for creating more cooperatives, and will continue the process until there are no more unemployed people.

Why would they help poor people who don't want to give anything in return?That's why I think that the charity in this world is mostly fraud. But they are fraud because the people like you and me allow them to be.

I would like to ask you a few questions about ending using money, please:If you live in a community where there is no property and money, then how can you make sure no one enters uninvited in the house where you live?Do you agree that by ending to use money the people won't become competent over night and they won't become angels over night? Alcoholics will still be alcoholics, criminals will keep being criminals, junkies will keep being junkies, and so on.If the TVP supporters want to live without money and private property, what stops them from doing that? What are they waiting for? They wait for an entire country to give up using money, or for the entire world? What is the "critical mass"? They need let's say at least 100,000 people or similar in order to start such a community? Honestly, I don't understand why they don't apply their own pilosopy.Why do you think Jacque Fresco doesn't want to answer the questions publicly, like you do, so anyone can consult his answers quickly and easily? Why he is not encouraging his supporters to come with ideas and debate and start projects togeher, on a web forum like this one?Why the TVP doesn't at least recommend projects like OSE, which are doing important steps towards resource based economy?

Since I am dealing with this ideas for some decades already, I eventually stumbled over Jacque Fresco a few years ago and know a bit about his Venus Project. Just for the records: I think that he is much to technocratic and his vision is much to complicated and elaborate to be realized anytime soon. His ideas how to shift our civilization into his proposed version is simply not feasilby at all.Yes I also found The Venus Project in 2007. The idea of a resource based economy looks wonderful and inspiring to me. But then, I was disappointed to see that he talks about the magic solution of eliminating money and property instead of creating a resource based economy step by step. If the government rents land to the people then those people will make their own food, they will trade the surplus, and many of them won't even need money anymore! So that's a solid step forward towards a resource-based economy. If the people have no houses, then the government can give jobs to the people to create houses, and then it can allow them to rent the houses in return for their work. Again, another solid step forward. OSE-like projects will allow you to buy an open source machine and when something breaks, you buy only that component, and you can consult forums on internet where people discuss how to repair them. That will greatly reduce waste, improve recycling, reduce hours wasted with non necessary work and so on. Another solid step forward. There are many other steps the people can do towards a resource based economyBut the problem is that Jacque Fresco acts like all the leaders and TVP acts like most of the organizations in this world: Doesn't have a forum, doesn't answer the questions, not interested about your ideas, doesn't encourage the people to debate, to start groups and actions together. He just repeats that elimination of money and property will automagically fix all problems: incompetence, alcoholism, crime, corruption and so on.

Rape is a cultural problem in South Africa for example. Do you really think that rape will be gone the next day if the people there will stop using money?

On the other hand, making steps forward a resource based economy will gradually reduce the need to use money. If you buy open source hardware then you will use much less money to repair them for example. If you have your own land, then you don't have to buy your food, and so on.There is no need of a fanatic jump into the unknown. If the people won't use money, that doesn't mean that they will automatically volunteer to do research to develop new technology and it doesn't mean that they will become capable to manage big research facilities. But if the government will do it's job, then everyone can have a decent life with little hours of work per day, and those who feel like volunteering will help projects like OSE, and in time they will grow communities like OSE where they will do research without being paid. It will take time for the people to learn that.

Jacque Fresco has been for me, one of the most inspiring visionaries of our time.What it's good in his philosophy is the "resource-based economy" concept. But the way he wants to create it is a disaster.

That is just a personal statement of course, but it could be pointed out that most visionaries are not around to see their ideas manifest.If he would have asked his supporters to do concrete actions towards creating a resource-based economy, then he might have had a chance to be around to see his ideas manifest.

If it inspires, that is enough. Inspiration can have a domino effect over time that may bring about the very thing that caused the inspiration in the first place.Well, his idea is somehow very similar with the idea of communism. It inspired a lot of people. But there were no debates about HOW to implement a real, functional communism. "Communist" leaders promised a life in heaven to the naive who followed them, and then those leaders became slave owners. So the domino effect was disastrous. That's what happens when the people expect a new system will fix everything for them, instead of building the new system, step by step.The people were not engaged into debates about how to implement communism. There was no talk about how to build cooperatives, how to grow them, how to make them functional, what kind of regulations they have to respect, etc. I have never seen any communist leader or speaker to call the people to build communism. They only talk about taking over (stealing) the existing private property.And The Venus Project is very similar - it doesn't engage the people into building the future resource-based economy. And the effect can also be disastrous. The future leaders who will promise a resource-based economy can very well become slave owners, if the people will expect the system to fix everything for them.

I am very much for a resource-based economy. But if we want to create it, then we have to talk a lot. We must learn how to manage all the community issues. We must understand how to create the resource-based economy, and how to keep it working. We must be prepared to handle challenges and even dangers (yes, there might be people or entities not happy about a community having a resource based economy). We must talk about and do a lot of things. Just listening to a leader who wants followers and promotes a magic solution is not enough.

Germany and Austria prevented speculation with such a basic commodity and people could afford to rent a house. Since they could afford to rent from the government at a decent price, there was no reason for them to pay inflated prices when they were buying houses. I suspect Denmark, Holland, Sweden, Finland and Norway also have good public housing. And they also don't have an economic crisis!That's how they prevented speculation. So this kind of things happen as we speak.However, if the governments are the abettors of (global) plutocracy, then they can maintain monopoly, price fixing and speculation, even in a money free society, as you admitted above (societies runned by the fist law).You mean the problems with capitalism can be prevented by providing resources to everyone that needs them, free of charge?

Sounds kind of like a resource-based economy.

But the problem is that Jacque Fresco acts like all the leaders and TVP acts like most of the organizations in this world: Doesn't have a forum, doesn't answer the questions, not interested about your ideas, doesn't encourage the people to debate, to start groups and actions together. He just repeats that elimination of money and property will automagically fix all problems: incompetence, alcoholism, crime, corruption and so on.That's not true at all. I emailed TVP with a few questions and got a response in less than two days. He doesn't encourage people to start TVP-like communities because, as he rightly points out, those communities will be assaulted by capitalists once their system begins to fail. Look at the response to Occupy; recently, in Oregon and Washington, OWS activists' houses were raided by feds wielding automatic weapons, who were specifically looking for anti-establishment evidence.He also does not say anything of the like, in fact, he repeatedly says that "[TVP] isn't a utopia or a perfect solution, it's just a hell of a lot better than what we have".

Why are you so focused on TVP, anyway? The viability of RBE is neither contingent on TVP, nor is TVP the only advocate for it. I found out about OSE through the Zeitgeist Movement, which is not only much more well-known than TVP, but is made up of a much larger and more diverse population, with all kinds of projects going on that are exactly opposite to the claimed problems you have with TVP. No one even mentioned Jacque Fresco before you did, and promptly proceeded to poison the RBE well by claiming that Jacque smokes crack.

If you live in a community where there is no property and money, then how can you make sure no one enters uninvited in the house where you live?1. Why is that important?2. Why would someone who has access to their own house and any product they need or want, want to enter someone else's residence uninvited?3. Seriously, why is that such an issue? If someone comes in your house uninvited, ask them to leave. It's not like this is prevented any more by private property, in fact, there's more of a reason to do so, since lots of people don't have houses, and others will enter your house to steal your shit and hock it.Do you agree that by ending to use money the people won't become competent over night and they won't become angels over night? Alcoholics will still be alcoholics, criminals will keep being criminals, junkies will keep being junkies, and so on.Not necessarily, since the prevalence of drug use and violent crime is strongly correlated with socioeconomic disparity. Intelligence is strongly correlated with socioeconomic status (SES), which itself relates to access to higher quality and more education. Nobody is saying that all problems will be solved overnight (stop using straw men, we're not that dumb), but with no socioeconomic disparity and the elevated SES that a high-tech, classless, propertyless society would have, most of these things would disappear in one or two generations.If the TVP supporters want to live without money and private property, what stops them from doing that? Maybe the fact that I live in a country that taxes my very existence, and has one of the largest police state apparatuses in the world? Or the difficulty of finding people nearby who are willing and able to do so? Most people are not technical experts, or even technically proficient. Most of my friends consider me some kind of wizard because I'm capable of repairing things and building machines. People in our society are generally specialists. Try talking to someone about a subject not related to their academic or career discipline. They'll either not say anything, say they know nothing about it, or attempt to say something and sound like a total retard. Intelligence is partially due to global networks in the brain; in other words, a generalist will be more intelligent than a specialist, given equal education. Really novel technologies are interdisciplinary.What are they waiting for? They wait for an entire country to give up using money, or for the entire world?As previously mentioned, trying to just go without money is not going to work for very long, because the establishment wants everyone to be subject to compulsory wealth extraction. Even an entire country would have great difficulty going without money/property, because many important resources are in specific locales, and would therefore require trading with those countries that own them. An agent that is trading, whether a person or a whole country, is an owner of private property.

Even if you have self-replicating EBM machines, you're going to be limited in the materials you can use. Neodymium is critical to advanced electromagnetics, but it's mined almost exclusively in China. Graphite is critical to advanced electronics, and it's mined almost exclusively in China. I could go on, but I'd rather not. You can't have an open system that is self-enclosed, especially when the rest of the world has the ability to operate outside its own locale. The lack of money would prevent the community from accessing most published research, as well. And due to the large proportion of critical web infrstructure owned by private companies like L3, it's likely that the community would be cut off from access to the internet, as well.

Most of this information is established throughout the RBE advocacy community, and not that hard to find. Your arguments are totally inconsistent; first you say that the existing system, with the elimination of three particular things, is the only working model, then that there are no magic bullets (as opposed to your three-prong modification to capitalism, which isn't a magic bullet, but would magically fix every problem with it), then you claim you are pro-RBE. You also claim that Fresco is a crack-smoking, utopia-peddling, communist-like leader, and that his ideas will never work because we don't know exactly how to implement them, while also claiming that your fix to capitalism will just work through law enforcement, which works ever so fucking well at enforcing existing laws.

1. Why do you think US govt. split AT&T into smaller companies in 1984? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_BellBecause monopolies go against the "rules" of capitalism which are impossible to actually follow but supposed to cause it to work.Most importantly, AT&T has re-agglomerated, and is now part of the unified apparatus of wealth extraction for the global elite. See the NSA spy room scandal.2. Why do you think US govt. is forcing companies to pay penalties for abusing dominant market position and for creating monopolies and cartels? See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung#Price_cartelsAgain, because it goes against the "rules" that are impossible in practice. Notice, they're not implementing structures to prevent this from happening, or reversing the effects caused by price fixing, they are simply punishing them after the fact by extracting wealth from them.This is the essence of why government regulations don't work: They are only able to function in the case that:1. The agent is honest enough to follow them on their own2. The agent is dishonest, but does not cover their tracks well enough, or3. The agent is dishonest, but will change their behavior based on the existence of a penalty.There are many, many cases of none of these conditions being met. Essentially the only way to completely prevent a behavior through regulation is through a global, all-seeing surveillance apparatus.3. Do you understand that there are also average and even rich people who support communism? They can sponsor creation of cooperatives. I would also be also happy to support such cooperatives.RIch people also tend to be closed off from the rest of the world, interacting with the lower classes mostly through monetary services.4. Why do you think no communist speaker is calling the people to build cooperatives?I've already listed numerous reasons for this above.5. Do you understand that abuses can happen in any society and that it's only the people who can prevent abuses? Therefore the solution is not in the system but it's in the people.The point is not that an RBE cannot possibly be abused, but that it does not actively encourage abuse like a market-based system. The highest score goes to the best gamer, not the best contributor.

As for the idea that RBE supporters are "doing nothing", you should learn not to be presumptuous. I and many others are doing lots of different things that advocate and enable an RBE. Awareness of an idea is most key to its implementation, especially one where the scale encompasses literally every single person on the planet. How can you implement a paradigm like a global, non-privatized economy, if most of the globe is completely unaware of it? Further, awareness tends to grow exponentially, which is where the "critical mass" aspect comes in. An idea spread to several people can then more easily be spread to a larger number of people than the first iteration. Ideas are more acceptable to people if they are acceptable to their peers.

You mean the problems with capitalism can be prevented by providing resources to everyone that needs them, free of charge?Not for free. The government can rent houses and land for a decent price. And that will prevent speculation of prices of land and houses. The price must include all the inherent costs: a decent tax to pay the police, people in the government, etc; the cost of maintaining the building (things break sometimes so they need to be repaired), and even a little bit of profit, so the government can buy/make more houses and land to supply to everyone who needs. A capitalist system needs to apply some socialist concepts in order to work better. I don't believe that the "unemployment help" is included in the definition of capitalism. Yet, a capitalist system needs to apply such a socialist measure in order to work better! The same with renting houses and land - they are socialist measures that a capitalist system needs to include, in order to be functional.

Sounds kind of like a resource-based economy.Yes. It is possible to make solid steps forward in order to create the resource-based economy (RBE). You don't have to start with ending to use money and private property.

That's not true at all. I emailed TVP with a few questions and got a response in less than two days. He doesn't encourage people to start TVP-like communities because, as he rightly points out, those communities will be assaulted by capitalists once their system begins to fail.I think OSE is in the spirit of resource-based economy. And it's not assaulted by the authorities. Also, all the work done in the spirit of Open Source is another step forward towards a resource-based economy. These kind of things should be supported by TVP and especially by Jacque Fresco.

Look at the response to Occupy; recently, in Oregon and Washington, OWS activists' houses were raided by feds wielding automatic weapons, who were specifically looking for anti-establishment evidence.Well, considering the fact that the members of the OWS talk only about stealing the private property and fighting the government and they never want to talk about building cooperatives and communism, it's no surprise to me that they were raided. Some of them call to action like "building" communism with force, with guns. You said they can't build cooperatives but they also have rich supporters like Michael Moore who can afford to sponsor creation of new cooperatives. The fact that cooperatives already exist is a proof that cooperatives can be made. Also, don't forget the fact that since the communist ideas were born time ago, they had more than one century of time to build cooperatives, even in the times of prosperity. Never wandered why people talk about communism only when they are poor? When they had a good life they could easily start to create cooperatives. They had plenty of time to do that.

He also does not say anything of the like, in fact, he repeatedly says that "[TVP] isn't a utopia or a perfect solution, it's just a hell of a lot better than what we have".But in the same time he says there will be no army, no police, no prisons. That really sounds like an utopia. So he contradicts himself.

Why are you so focused on TVP, anyway?Because you can recognize a TVP supporter by the way they speak. They totally hate money and private property and they complain that it's all about government fault, and they have an excuse for not starting creating the RBE, because, isn't it, it's the government fault! The thread was started by a TVP supporter and I could detect that instantly.

The viability of RBE is neither contingent on TVP, nor is TVP the only advocate for it. I found out about OSE through the Zeitgeist Movement, which is not only much more well-known than TVP, but is made up of a much larger and more diverse population, with all kinds of projects going on that are exactly opposite to the claimed problems you have with TVP.But in the same time, Jacque Fresco doesn't encourage people to start TVP-like communities. TVP doesn't even have a forum, where people like you and me can debate ideas, even at the risk of getting angry. Debates are necessary in order to make things clear, in order to honestly answer to questions, in order to find a way to build the future RBE.

No one even mentioned Jacque Fresco before you did, and promptly proceeded to poison the RBE well by claiming that Jacque smokes crack.Yes, because someone hating money and private property so much is most likely Jacque Fresco's follower. Many of your claims are also derived from the beliefs he is spreading. So I wasn't insulting you, I was attacking the one who is trying to trick you do believe in a miraculous solution.

If you live in a community where there is no property and money, then how can you make sure no one enters uninvited in the house where you live?1. Why is that important?2. Why would someone who has access to their own house and any product they need or want, want to enter someone else's residence uninvited?Because there are a lot of idiots and there is a lot of crime in this world. Like it or not, it's a fact.

3. Seriously, why is that such an issue? If someone comes in your house uninvited, ask them to leave. It's not like this is prevented any more by private property, in fact, there's more of a reason to do so, since lots of people don't have houses, and others will enter your house to steal your shit and hock it.Sometimes the criminals do it just to make fun of others. If the people stop using money and private property, then it doesn't mean they will become angels overnight.

Not necessarily, since the prevalence of drug use and violent crime is strongly correlated with socioeconomic disparity. Intelligence is strongly correlated with socioeconomic status (SES), which itself relates to access to higher quality and more education. Nobody is saying that all problems will be solved overnight (stop using straw men, we're not that dumb), but with no socioeconomic disparity and the elevated SES that a high-tech, classless, propertyless society would have, most of these things would disappear in one or two generations.That's true. But that can be achieved by building a better society. Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway have much less criminality than other countries. That's because they have a better system: A capitalist system, reinforced by some strong socialist measures; Also they have some other good features. Building a better society and creating a RBE society has nothing to do with eliminating money. By the contrary, in a better society the people can have the choice to easily give up using money if that's what they wish. Then they can find others like them and live (almost) without money if that's what they wish.Anyways, you agree that not absolutely all criminality can be eliminated. In that case, there is still need for police and prisons, even if in less quantity. Fresco said there will be no police at all.

If the TVP supporters want to live without money and private property, what stops them from doing that?Maybe the fact that I live in a country that taxes my very existence, and has one of the largest police state apparatuses in the world? Or the difficulty of finding people nearby who are willing and able to do so? Most people are not technical experts, or even technically proficient.But ending to use money won't solve the incompetence problem. On the other hand, by making open source machines and even houses, will greatly reduce the need to be a specialist - you just consult the documentation and then you know how to repair your things.Anyways, I think TVP has enough supporters so they can move all together and they can build the society they dream about. Sure, they will still have to pay taxes to the government and will have to pay for services like internet. But inside their own community, they can live without using money or private property. The more successful they will be, the more people will join them, until eventually one day everyone will join them. But it's insane to refuse to build such a community, just because they don't want to pay the internet. Then they can have an excuse forever for not starting such a community!

Most of my friends consider me some kind of wizard because I'm capable of repairing things and building machines. People in our society are generally specialists. Try talking to someone about a subject not related to their academic or career discipline. They'll either not say anything, say they know nothing about it, or attempt to say something and sound like a total retard. Intelligence is partially due to global networks in the brain; in other words, a generalist will be more intelligent than a specialist, given equal education. Really novel technologies are interdisciplinary.But if they will participate, then they can accelerate the development of open source machines, and they won't need to be specialists anymore. They will be able to fix their own things without calling a specialist to do that and without becoming specialists on their own. And then they can have the time to acquire multidisciplinary knowledge. And not only the open source hardware can improve the situation: also some minimum regulations. They can participate for creating those regulations.So it's not only the government's fault that they are so "robotic". It's much more their own fault because they don't try to build a way out of that situation.

As previously mentioned, trying to just go without money is not going to work for very long, because the establishment wants everyone to be subject to compulsory wealth extraction. Even an entire country would have great difficulty going without money/property, because many important resources are in specific locales, and would therefore require trading with those countries that own them. An agent that is trading, whether a person or a whole country, is an owner of private property.I understand what you mean: for example Norway has a lot of oil. Most of the money of the International Monetary Fund are coming from Norway because Norway has too much excedent of money. If they decide to stop selling oil (they simply don't need all those money), the world would be in big difficulty to supply their oil needs.But if USA lives without money, then it can sell its own surplus (food, industrial products, etc) for money, and then it can buy oil from Norway with money. But just because you are using money in order to trade with external entities is not an excuse for using money inside the community, in order to supply resources for everyone. Until you can find an alternative to buying a specific resource from outside, you can use money but only for trading with the rest of the worldSo in my view there is no real excuse for not starting such communities.

Even if you have self-replicating EBM machines, you're going to be limited in the materials you can use. Neodymium is critical to advanced electromagnetics, but it's mined almost exclusively in China. Graphite is critical to advanced electronics, and it's mined almost exclusively in China. I could go on, but I'd rather not. You can't have an open system that is self-enclosed, especially when the rest of the world has the ability to operate outside its own locale. Using money to trade with external entities is not an excuse for using money inside your own community, if living wihout money is what you want. Only the (small) part of your community who deal with other communities have to handle money. The rest of the community can be money free. This is not a religion where touching money is "the sin", isn't it?That's why I dislike the philosophy of Jacque Fresco: because it promotes a fanatic change, and always finds an excuse for not applying what it promotes. He doesn't want to talk about a step by step approach. Using money to trade only with the exterior is an important step forward, if you want to live without money. I disagree that using money is the problem, but if that's what he promotes, then he should encourage doing steps forward to achieve what he promotes. He is always blaming others and that shows quite a limited intelligence - sorry. The leaders in the "communist" countries always found an excuse for terrorizing and starving their own people: they never admitted their people are suffering and they always blamed the "imperialists" and the "capitalist history" for everything. Therefore, Jacque Fresco and the people like him can always find excuses for anything and blame the rest of the world for it. Such a philosophy can be extremely disruptive.

The lack of money would prevent the community from accessing most published research, as well. And due to the large proportion of critical web infrstructure owned by private companies like L3, it's likely that the community would be cut off from access to the internet, as well.I think we have enough technology already to live a more than decent life without need for future technologies. And some posts ago you said that such communities can also make research on their own, maybe even more efficient than today's money based research.And I really don't believe you would be cut from the internet. Really, that would make a lot of people outside your community to be extremely angry and protest all day in front of the government.

Most of this information is established throughout the RBE advocacy community, and not that hard to find. Your arguments are totally inconsistent; first you say that the existing system, with the elimination of three particular things, is the only working model, then that there are no magic bullets (as opposed to your three-prong modification to capitalism, which isn't a magic bullet, but would magically fix every problem with it), then you claim you are pro-RBE.Wait a minute. I am not suggesting that eliminating speculation, renting land and renting houses are the only measures that we need. But I do claim that those things are the first things we need right now. Because the crisis was generated exactly by the lack of those things in our "capitalist" systems. I also think we need many other things (like open source hardware for example), and I do claim that we have to talk about what we (the average people) can do to improve the situation. We have to debate and find the most important things we need to do. But I can not accept that there is a "magic bullet" solution, especially when the people who promote that solution always find an excuse for not implementing what they promote.I do not suggest that the capitalism is the only working model. I also claim that communism can also work, but in order to work, it has to be built - and built by growing cooperatives, not built on stealing the private companies.I have no problem to support building of a real capitalist community and in the same time to support builind another real communist community. By the contrary, I would be happy to do it.And yes, I am pro RBE but I do understand that all it takes to create a resource-based economy is to build it, step by step, and has nothing to do with elimination of money and private property. In a better, functional society, the people can simply live with or without money and property whenever they wish.

You also claim that Fresco is a crack-smoking, utopia-peddling, communist-like leader, and that his ideas will never work because we don't know exactly how to implement them, while also claiming that your fix to capitalism will just work through law enforcement, which works ever so fucking well at enforcing existing laws.Can't you see that you find excuses for not building the solutions? You find excuses for not starting a money free community. You find excuses for the OWS people not to start making cooperatives, even though they have rich supporters (like Michael Moore) and they can accept donations, and they can do voluntary work, even though some of them they have jobs and can financially support creating such cooperatives. It's always the fault of the governments and of those who are using money. Can't you see that's exactly the kind o philosophy Fresco is promoting?

1. Why do you think US govt. split AT&T into smaller companies in 1984? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_BellBecause monopolies go against the "rules" of capitalism which are impossible to actually follow but supposed to cause it to work.I don't believe the original definition of capitalism included the concept of controlling monopolies. After the capitalism was applied, in time, the people realized that it can't work while allowing monopolies to fix the prices.So the capitalism had to evolve in order to become (more) functional. It's definition was very incomplete and unrealistic. Therefore capitalism needs some future adjustments. And yes, socialist measures have to be included in the capitalist systems in order to make them work.

Most importantly, AT&T has re-agglomerated, and is now part of the unified apparatus of wealth extraction for the global elite. See the NSA spy room scandal.Yes, but they re-agglomerated recently, when it didn't make a difference anymore: they can't have the monopoly of the communication today. Today USA has various mobile phone companies, internet phone (Skype, Gizmo5) and even internet communication, so a big AT&T can't hurt the consumers.

2. Why do you think US govt. is forcing companies to pay penalties for abusing dominant market position and for creating monopolies and cartels? See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung#Price_cartelsAgain, because it goes against the "rules" that are impossible in practice. Notice, they're not implementing structures to prevent this from happening, or reversing the effects caused by price fixing, they are simply punishing them after the fact by extracting wealth from them.Sometimes they are reversing the effects: Can't find it now but I remember that in class-action suit Microsoft had to pay back to their clients a certain amount for each of the copies of Windows they sold, in a US state (probably California).However, the money they pay in penalties go to the government, so it has more money for public infrastructure and for financing research (I understand that US government is sponsoring a lot of research).And most importantly, mostly because of such penalties, the companies keep the price low. I can't complain about computer memory prices evolution in the last 10 years.

This is the essence of why government regulations don't work: They are only able to function in the case that:1. The agent is honest enough to follow them on their own2. The agent is dishonest, but does not cover their tracks well enough, or3. The agent is dishonest, but will change their behavior based on the existence of a penalty.There are many, many cases of none of these conditions being met. Essentially the only way to completely prevent a behavior through regulation is through a global, all-seeing surveillance apparatus.Well, if I have to work 1 hour per day more because of such behavior then I don't mind. But if I have to work 8 hours more, then I do have a problem. Therefore there is no need to completely prevent such a behavior, that's not possible in this world. But it's enough to keep it in certain limits. And the evolution of computing technology and it's prices in the last 40 years shows that it's possible to keep bad behavior of agents under acceptable levels.So there is no need for an all-seeing surveillance apparatus. The apparatus has to survey only the biggest companies, not every citizen.

3.Do you understand that there are also average and even rich people who support communism? They can sponsor creation of cooperatives. I would also be also happy to support such cooperatives.RIch people also tend to be closed off from the rest of the world, interacting with the lower classes mostly through monetary services.But there are rich people who support OWS, like Michael Moore for example. They can help starting cooperatives. And that's what he should do, instead of just talking about the wonders of communism. There are also lots of average people like me who can send some money to help them to build cooperatives.

4. Why do you think no communist speaker is calling the people to build cooperatives?I've already listed numerous reasons for this above.Sorry but none of those excuses are valid. If even the people like me are ready to support them, then they have no excuse.

5. Do you understand that abuses can happen in any society and that it's only the people who can prevent abuses? Therefore the solution is not in the system but it's in the people.The point is not that an RBE cannot possibly be abused, but that it does not actively encourage abuse like a market-based system. The highest score goes to the best gamer, not the best contributor.Well, if the capitalist system is including good regulations, socialist measures and safety backups, then the best gamers can't hurt the average people. And inside such a system will be easy for the people like you to create better RBE communities and they will be able to live without money and without property if that's what they want. On the other hand, even in the RBE systems there can be gamers exactly like the "communist" countries had gamers. People exchanged hidden properties and privileges, and of course, the highest score went to the best gamers. The only difference was that it was everything underground, instead of being in sight.

As for the idea that RBE supporters are "doing nothing", you should learn not to be presumptuous. I and many others are doing lots of different things that advocate and enable an RBE. Awareness of an idea is most key to its implementation, especially one where the scale encompasses literally every single person on the planet. How can you implement a paradigm like a global, non-privatized economy, if most of the globe is completely unaware of it? Further, awareness tends to grow exponentially, which is where the "critical mass" aspect comes in. An idea spread to several people can then more easily be spread to a larger number of people than the first iteration. Ideas are more acceptable to people if they are acceptable to their peers.I agree. The only problem is that when the focus is too much or exclusively on spreading the idea, then it's becoming a religion. And when the critical mass will be gathered, the lack of experience in practicing the RBE communities has the same disastrous potential like the "communist" countries: to hurt so many lives in the name of RBE.

I agree that we need a RBE system. I think anyone can agree with that, since we all need resources. But I strongly disagree that the first practical step we need to do is to eliminate money and private property.We can build communism. We can improve our "capitalist" systems in order to make them really functional capitalist systems. We can participate to solve community issues. The people can make associations that take care of the deaf persons, to give just an example, so they don't need to wait for the government to fix that issue.Such improved communities will get to RBE step by step.

And I strongly reject the idea that there is always an excuse for not building communism, for not living without money, finding an excuse that it's someone else's fault (the government, other countries, etc). You can always find an excuse for not acting, because "the government will assault us".

gonzo,The thread was started by a TVP supporter and I could detect that instantly.

Just that you start to realize it, I will mention it again: I'm not a supporter of TVP.

Now to some of your questions:I heard about it. The people work for private companies, the company pays the people 1 Euro and the government pays the rest. Am I right?

No, these jobs cannot be offered by a company, only by public or non profit organizations. The jobless being assigned to this jobs are completely free to the employer, they get the 1 Euro (actually it can be up to 2,50 Euro per hour) from welfare additional to their regular welfare money. The problem is, that they have no right to deny such a job, nor to object to the conditions the have to work in. It's outright slavery.

Well, you say you are from Germany, if possible please tell me what you know about public housing in Germany. And I would like to know if Germany had it's own crisis and how much it affected the population.

There is no such thing as public housing in Germany anymore, with some very rare exceptions. Homeless can get a bed in a dormitory in public shelters, if there is one at the place and free. Some cities still own some flats, which they will rent to eligible (low income, many kids) people, but as I wrote earlier, most of these have already been sold to investors to ease the load of debt a bit for the city. What takes place is financial assistance for the jobless and the poor. They live in privately owned flats and the city pays their rent to the owner.

Actually, Germany seems to have profited from the last crisis. It's economy is growing strong, and even its population has raised the last year the first time for a lot of years. So, no crisis in Germany, yet.

If you live in a community where there is no property and money, then how can you make sure no one enters uninvited in the house where you live?

Ackhuman answered that already. I would like to add a certain bit. There is a difference between property and the right to use something. The first allows you to just have it, without actually using it or needing it. The second allows you to have it, as long as you use it. And as long as you use it, and you got this right to use legally, no one can just take it away from you. If you don't use it anymore, it becomes public property again. And the public decides who will get the next use of it, not the quickest or the strongest.Do you agree that by ending to use money the people won't become competent over night and they won't become angels over night? Alcoholics will still be alcoholics, criminals will keep being criminals, junkies will keep being junkies, and so on.

Well, yes and no. People won't become competent or angels over night, true. But alcoholics will have a hard time to feed their craving, when there is no more alcohol because you just have the money to buy it. What would you buy the alcohol with, when the currency is the time you have worked? How will the junkie get his next fix, when there is no more motivation for the criminal anymore to distribute it, because he can't earn any money with it anymore? And please don't come with apples, tomatoes, potatoes or sex again, that just can't be a basis for a criminal career. The same applies to many other crimes, where the motivation lies in the money you can make with it. Yes, their will still be bending of rules, but it will be much, much harder to shovel in the profits. Literally.

I leave your TVP questions to the TVP supporters. I'm not one of them.

Rape is a cultural problem in South Africa for example. Do you really think that rape will be gone the next day if the people there will stop using money?

Rape is mostly not motivated by money. So that will not stop because there is no money anymore. Unless your are talking about rape in the meaning of "breaking in" new prostitutes or to coerce money from the victim. That would end very much, because the pimp or rapist won't like the idea with apples, tomatoes, potatoes or sex.

.. most of these have already been sold to investors to ease the load of debt a bit for the city.They live in privately owned flats and the city pays their rent to the owner.That's very strange. Because, if the city owns those apartments, it will be cheaper for the city to allow the poor to live there, instead of paying their rent to the owners. So, by selling those apartments, the city got some quick cash but in the long term it will be more expensive so it will make even more debt. Therefore the government is cheating you.

So, no crisis in Germany, yet.Why? What prevented the crisis to occur in Germany, in your opinion?And another question: I heard that in Germany it's much cheaper to buy an apartment than in Italy, France, Spain or UK. I heard about prices like 35,000 euro for a small apartment or even 25,000 for a small flat. Is that true?

There is a difference between property and the right to use something. The first allows you to just have it, without actually using it or needing it. The second allows you to have it, as long as you use it. And as long as you use it, and you got this right to use legally, no one can just take it away from you. If you don't use it anymore, it becomes public property again.But then the right to use it should be encoded in the law, don't you think? Because Ackhuman seemed to have a problem with the encoded law, and I thought you probably agree with him.

And the public decides who will get the next use of it, not the quickest or the strongest.Hmm... it looks like in Germany it's the people in the government who decide what happens with such public property. They decide to sell, in order to create more public debt, while they claim they want to reduce public debt. So it's not the public who decides, but the people in the (local) government who decide. And that's the case exactly because the public doesn't bother to involve into the issue.

How will the junkie get his next fix, when there is no more motivation for the criminal anymore to distribute it, because he can't earn any money with it anymore? And please don't come with apples, tomatoes, potatoes or sex again, that just can't be a basis for a criminal career.Anything they can find suited as a currency, they will use it: gold, silver, platinum, diamonds (artificial diamonds are not dirt-cheap also), the currency of another country, and who knows what else they will find.

With amount of your personal time that you have committed to this thread Gonzo, you could have designed, built, and done a load of laundry in your open source washing machine...just a thoughtWell, I am not good at designing machines, sorry.

But if we are to create a resource based economy, we must talk about it. We have to clarify every single aspect of the system. If we just change the people in power and give power to some politicians who claim that they will deliver RBE for us, then it will be a disaster. It will be not much more different than the situation in all those "communist" countries where groups of terrorists got absolute power in the name of communism. It's the people who have to build the system and to participate into democratic decisions. If they just delegate the government to do all the job, that will encourage a lot of abuses.

If the people want real democracy, then they have the obligation to involve into decision making. If they don't want to assume the obligations, then they have no excuses to complain about abuses.

What would you buy the alcohol with, when the currency is the time you have worked?Where do you register that time? In a computer database? What if someone hacks the database and modifies the currency everyone in a city has? If you go to a shop to buy something and their internet connection is down, that means they can't check the database. What's the difference between stealing money and stealing hours worked in the registers?

Ackhuman for example suggested that there should be no money and no other currency at all, and no trade also. What do you think about that?

I, and most others, think mainly out of three reasons. Firstly, Germany always was adamant in austerity. True, we also have 2 tril Euros national debt, but we have the strong economy to back it, and the debt was spent a little less irrationally than other countries seem to have done it. Secondly, the wages in Germany are relativly low. Most countries, especially those who are hit the hardest by the Euro crisis as of today, had huge wage raises since the Euro was introduced, inflation adjusted the wages in Germany did not rise at all since 2000, in many cases even shrinked. So we had comparativly high productivity by comparitivly low wages, what was (and is) just the other way around with the crisis victims. Last but not least, during the crisis peak in 2008 and 2009 Germany did not lay of its labor force, but sent it in state subsidized short-hour work: Germany paid most of the income loss the labourers had to suffer because they had to reduce their work hours by 50% or more. All these skilled workers were then available immediatly, when the economy started off again.

And another question: I heard that in Germany it's much cheaper to buy an apartment than in Italy, France, Spain or UK. I heard about prices like 35,000 euro for a small apartment or even 25,000 for a small flat. Is that true?

No, that is not true. But it mostly depends on the location and living standards. When you are lucky, you can even buy a house with some land for 25,000 Euros or less in Germany. But the roof will leak, the walls will be cracked, the floors will damaged, the utilities will not work properly. You can even buy a mansion with a park for 1 Euro frequently, when you are willing to sign a commitment to invest a million or more in reconstructing this protected historical monument. If you are looking for a standard quality small flat in good maintenance in an average location in Germany with lets say 500 squarefeet, you will pay some 50,000 Euros for it, give or take 10,000. You will have a hard time to find something that size for less then 35,000 Euros even in not-so-good neighbourhoods. From what I hear, the prices in southern Europe are not much lower anymore, as they used to be, but they are not more expensive either.But then the right to use it should be encoded in the law, don't you think? Because Ackhuman seemed to have a problem with the encoded law, and I thought you probably agree with him.

I personally believe that you need encoded law as soon as the community is too large to remember all the names of all its members. On the other hand, encoded law takes away individual freedom. So you need to have as few laws as possible, and just as many as absolutely necessary. Again, that has to something with the size of the community. The bigger a community, the less chance you have to solve problems based on comon sense and mutual agreement. Laws are a necessary evil, to be avoided as much as possible, but the headcount of the community is the main factor to determine how much coded law is needed. That's the main reason, why I advocate the position, that the right of law making should be taken away from nation states and their parliaments and given to the cities and their councils. The right to use something when you legally acquired it, does not need to be supported by coded law, when this is regarded by the immediate neighbourhood as common sense and based on mutual consense. If someone violates this then unwritten rule, he will be judged violating common sense and mutual consense, what is good enough, and the punishment may be as simple as being ejected from the community.

it looks like in Germany it's the people in the government who decide what happens with such public property. ... So it's not the public who decides, but the people in the (local) government who decide.

I was not talking about Germany, but an ideal situation. Germany is as capitalistic, as consumism addicted, as money enslaved as the rest of the "developed" world. When the public should decide, it should have the means to do so. What we call democracy is as far away from participation of the public in decision making as any dictatorship.And that's the case exactly because the public doesn't bother to involve into the issue.

Because it doesn't matter to them. They cannot participate in decision making, and they are rarely struck more then peripherally and insignificantly by the decisions of government. It's the piece by piece, each of it not really painful, but added over the decades, which has led to the global plutocracy we have today. There is no outcry over a tiny removal of freedom, especially in the name of safety and security or counterterrorism, but many of those tiny removals end up in the Orwellian situation we find all over the world now.

Anything they can find suited as a currency, they will use it: gold, silver, platinum, diamonds (artificial diamonds are not dirt-cheap also), the currency of another country, and who knows what else they will find.

Please explain, how the thousands of junkies in Miami, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles will get gold, silver, platinum or even artificial diamonds every day to pay their dealer? Remember, there is not more the 1/3 ounze of gold available per person on average. Silver or platinum even less. The pure existence of money allows for crime, which would just not feasible at all without it. Human trafficking, drug dealing or banking among it.Where do you register that time? In a computer database? What if someone hacks the database and modifies the currency everyone in a city has? If you go to a shop to buy something and their internet connection is down, that means they can't check the database. What's the difference between stealing money and stealing hours worked in the registers?

99% of all money in the world is computer data. With your reasoning, you should get rid of it as soon as possible. Look at the Ithaca Hours for instance. Not exactly what I would like to have, but it points into the right direction.

Ackhuman for example suggested that there should be no money and no other currency at all, and no trade also. What do you think about that?

Again, there are two answers for this question. Within a local community, which is based on common sense and mutual consense, and where everybody evenly contributes his share to provide this community with what it needs, there is no need for money or currency at all. When this community needs to trade its surplus for things it wants to acquire for one reason or the other from a different community, then there is a need to determine the worth of the trade objects to agree on a fair deal. Since money is arbitrary and object itself to speculation and fixing of worth, it will not be of help here. Time is a phyiscal constant and can be measured, it is the same in China, in Canada, in Kongo and in Finland, and will be the same as long as our universe exists. No inflation, no deflation, no collapse, no speculation. So time is a perfect basis to determine the worth of a commodity, simply by adding up all human work time directly or indirectly invested in it.

﻿Not for free. The government can rent houses and land for a decent price. And that will prevent speculation of prices of land and houses. And what about speculation on other resources?

I don't believe that the "unemployment help" is included in the definition of capitalism. Yet, a capitalist system needs to apply such a socialist measure in order to work better! Right, but inconsequential, as one way or the other, this is unlikely to affect whether or not someone is going to entitle it "real" capitalism.

Yes. It is possible to make solid steps forward in order to create the resource-based economy (RBE). You don't have to start with ending to use money and private property.The end of property is step one in order of importance, not of chronology.I think OSE is in the spirit of resource-based economy. And it's not assaulted by the authorities.OSE is not doing anything that provides a serious threat to the establishment. There's not even anyone really building the GVCS atm.

Well, considering the fact that the members of the OWS talk only about stealing the private property and fighting the governmentYou characterize OWS like that and expect us to take you seriously? Come on.

You said they can't build cooperatives but they also have rich supporters like Michael Moore who can afford to sponsor creation of new cooperatives.Yeah? Has he offered to do that? Why hasn't he done it? I'm sure he can find plenty of people that will walk off and start a coop with him.

Never wandered why people talk about communism only when they are poor? It's easy to appreciate the global wealth extraction apparatus when you are the target of the wealth, rather than the source.

When they had a good life they could easily start to create cooperatives. They had plenty of time to do that.But the differential advantage provided to them by capitalism made them not give a shit about all the poor people around them.

But in the same time he says there will be no army, no police, no prisons. That really sounds like an utopia. So he contradicts himself.He's not contradicting himself if it sounds to you like a utopia. Without nations, there are no armies. Without property and the violence caused by social stratification, there are no police. Without the delusion that punishment and confinement is the best way to solve social problems, there are no prisons. Only in the free market utopia is there a need for prisons, police, and soldiers. The RBE system has hospitals and doctors, not thugs and steel boxes.Because you can recognize a TVP supporter by the way they speak. They totally hate money and private property and they complain that it's all about government fault, and they have an excuse for not starting creating the RBE, because, isn't it, it's the government fault! The thread was started by a TVP supporter and I could detect that instantly.Yeah, no one ever complains about money, or private property, or the government. Oh, except TVP supporters.

By the way, you missed the point. The point is, why are you so focused on TVP specifically, when RBE is not contingent on TVP, there are only a handful of members, most RBE advocates do not describe themselves as "TVP supporters", do not think uncritically of Fresco, and in general do not even mention TVP. In fact, you were the very first person here to mention either TVP or Fresco. I am part of the Zeitgeist Movement, not TVP. However, nothing I have said thus far depends on any single person or group or persons, and is supported by evidence, which I would provide, were I under the impression that you would actually read any of it.But in the same time, Jacque Fresco doesn't encourage people to start TVP-like communities.In the same time as all the other groups and social movements that advocate RBE are NOT DEPENDENT ON JACQUE FRESCO, you think it's an issue that JACQUE FRESCO DOES NOT ENCOURAGE [...]?

"Yes, I see that all these other movements exist and are basically completely separate from Jacque Fresco, but you know what their problem is? Jacque Fresco doesn't do blah blah blah"You're being stupid. Stop it, or shut up.TVP doesn't even have a forum, where people like you and me can debate ideas, even at the risk of getting angry. Oh no. Good thing there's all those other forums where you can discuss RBE, since The Venus Project is the tiniest minority of RBE supporters. I'm glad you're actually reading all the stuff I spend all this time writing, by the way. Really makes me want to come back and "debate" you some more.

Yes, because someone hating money and private property so much is most likely Jacque Fresco's follower. Yeah, Jacque Fresco is like, the first person to ever have a problem with money and property. Anyone who criticizes it must be his follower, and must also smoke crack, and also criticism and hatred are liek, totally the same thing.Many of your claims are also derived from the beliefs he is spreading. No, actually. All of my claims are derived from this place called "reality," where things are logically consistent and subject to analysis. I've been an anti-capitalist since I was about 14 years old, long before I had ever heard of Jacque Fresco. I've had problems with private property since my first car was totaled and I realized what a shitty, dumb, inefficient pain in the ass it was for everyone to have their own copy of a thing, especially a car.So I wasn't insulting you, I was attacking the one who is trying to trick you do believe in a miraculous solution.Except you have provided no support, through either logic or evidence, to actually disprove any of the statements I have made about private property. Your support for private property thus far amounts to circular reasoning.Because there are a lot of idiots and there is a lot of crime in this world. Like it or not, it's a fact.

“Idiot” has no objective definition, so that couldn’t be factual. “Crime” factually exists only insofar as there are codified laws protecting property that are broken. There are lots more houses than homeless people, yet those homeless people are excluded from using those houses, because, surprise, they’re owned by someone. Are you worried about squatters? You wouldn’t have to if they had a place to live.

Sometimes the criminals do it just to make fun of others.

Oh, do they? I’m pretty sure that’s a load of shit, but if you believe so, feel free to support it with evidence. You should probably also stop using the word “criminal” when we are having a discussion in a context in which there is no law.If the people stop using money and private property, then it doesn't mean they will become angels overnight.

“Nobody is saying that all problems will be solved overnight (stop using straw men, we're not that dumb)”

YOU EVEN QUOTED THIS RIGHT AFTER YOU REPEATED THAT DUMB FUCKING STATEMENT.

That's true. But that can be achieved by building a better society. Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway have much less criminality than other countries.

Yes, they have low amounts of socioeconomic disparity.

Building a better society and creating a RBE society has nothing to do with eliminating money.

Building a “better” society, maybe not. Creating a resource-based economy has everything to do with eliminating money, actually. Money is used to encode information about resources into a single value. Resource-based economics depend on direct measurement of each parameter separately.

Anyways, you agree that not absolutely all criminality can be eliminated.

Pretty sure I never said that, since I don’t use the word “criminal” at all, unless I’m quoting it. Not all antisocial behavior can be eliminated merely by the implementation of an RBE, but that does not imply that:In that case, there is still need for police and prisons

That is some dumb shit. Police and prisons are not only not the only way to deal with antisocial behavior, they actually encourage antisocial behavior. Medical treatment, and orientation to prosocial behavior does work. This may require isolation, which is not the same as imprisonment, and should not include isolation from friends or loved ones.

But ending to use money won't solve the incompetence problem. On the other hand, by making open source machines and even houses, will greatly reduce the need to be a specialist - you just consult the documentation and then you know how to repair your things.I guess you've never actually built any open-source hardware, because it's not actually so simple. For one thing, each implementation of open-source hardware is slightly different, due to resource constraints. Not all problems have been solved right away, or even encountered. Sure, they will still have to pay taxes to the government and will have to pay for services like internet. But inside their own community, they can live without using money or private property.If the community is trading, then that implies that there is some exclusivity over the products of their labor. In other words, they have property which is owned by the community acting as a private entity. If the community is paying taxes, then it is part of the nation to which it is paying taxes. This subsequently means it is subject to its laws, such as those in many places that outlaw rainwater catch tanks, or permit laws which constrain possible productive activities to those allowed by the establishment.

I think we have enough technology already to live a more than decent life without need for future technologies.Okay, so how do you build a solar panel? Tell me without looking it up on the internet, in a scientific journal, or a copyrighted book.

Can't you see that you find excuses for not building the solutions? You find excuses for not starting a money free community. You find excuses for the OWS people not to start making cooperatives, even though they have rich supporters (like Michael Moore) and they can accept donations, and they can do voluntary work, even though some of them they have jobs and can financially support creating such cooperatives. It's always the fault of the governments and of those who are using money. Can't you see that's exactly the kind o philosophy Fresco is promoting?

And you find excuses for not building an open-source washing machine as you previously suggested.Today USA has various mobile phone companies, internet phone (Skype, Gizmo5) and even internet communication, so a big AT&T can't hurt the consumers.

Yet nearly all mobile networks depend on the infrastructure of the big three wireless providers. This is one case where it is nearly impossible for a small company to build an effective service, because mobile customers have an expectation to be able to use their phones outside of their local area, meaning there is a large infrastructure requirement.

Can't find it now but I remember that in class-action suit Microsoft had to pay back to their clients a certain amount for each of the copies of Windows they sold, in a US state (probably California).

But there is yet to be a fix for the vendor lock-in that Microsoft creates through its cartel with GPU chipset manufacturers. Try buying a graphics card and using it on Linux.On the other hand, even in the RBE systems there can be gamers exactly like the "communist" countries had gamers. People exchanged hidden properties and privileges, and of course, the highest score went to the best gamers. The only difference was that it was everything underground, instead of being in sight.

I thought we had already established that the so-called “communist” countries were not even analogous to a communist society, due to its use of money and state property, both internally and externally. If there were “hidden properties” and “privileges” to be exchanged, then it wasn’t classless, and it did not eliminate private property.

While I found the first few posts still a tiny bit interesting, the thread now is IMO just boring. The old same arguments repeated over and over again.Any discussion will lead to no results if most basic values aren't shared by the participants.

@RabertThe questions in Your first post have pretty well been answered. Your opinions, Your anticipaty against money, capital and capitalism aren't shared by the overwhelming majority of peoples involved in OSE.Draw the consequences, Rabert: Don't invest time and effort in OSE, please look for a new playground.

Bastelmike, if you regard this thread as boring, just don't read it. Easy, isn't it?

As many discussions, this one simply has evolved, what is wrong with that? If you don't like people to write about stuff you are not interested in and try to stop this discussion because of that, you are quite antisocial. I don't think that with this attitude you fit very well into OSE and should look for a new playground.

Actually, from virtually all I read on OSE's blog and wiki, and as indicated by the first posts on this thread, I got the impression that what is expressed there is not very much pro money, capital or capitalism. How do you know, what the majority of people involved in OSE think about money, capital and capitalism, and where do you draw the conclusion from, that the majority don't share my opinions? I would be very much interested in learning about that.

@RabertHow do you know, what the majority of people involved in OSE think about money, capital and capitalism, and where do you draw the conclusion from, that the majority don't share my opinions? I would be very much interested in learning about that.Well, I can't see much support from other forum users for Your opinion, except Ackhuman.

Matt_Maier has explained that and why OSE needs to make profits. In the link from Elifarley, things like purchase, trade money are mentioned a lot of times. The only other one frequently active in this thread is Gonzo; and it doesn't look like he is a fan of Your ideas :DMaybe there are several OSE fans who dislike capitalism. But Your aversion against capital, money and property isn't shared by many folks here and I know of no OSE documents talking about eliminating property and money.

But I've seen several documents promoting the startup of open source enterprises, and all these are based on property, money and profit. And they all need some capital for starting. Like it or not, Rabert.

Maybe I am less social than You, but nevertheless Your ideas don't really fit here and thats probably the reason why more than 95% of the lines in this thread have been written by only 3 people.

Maybe I am less social than You, but nevertheless Your ideas don't really fit here and thats probably the reason why more than 95% of the lines in this thread have been written by only 3 people.

Just like in most other threads on this board, if they reach that many contributers at all ...

OSE is a movement founded and run mainly by craftsmen, technicians and engineers, so it does not suprise me much, that discussions on the social, political or economical environment the tools develeped by OSE should be used within are not that popular. I have studied philosophy, history, political science, and economy, I don't participate in discussions regarding technological designs or problems with constructing a machine. Technicians rarely discuss politics or philosophy. That's the way it is, and their is probably a reason for it. Trying to stop the others to discuss at all simply because you don't like or understand the topic, is simply dumb.

I'm very happy that this thread exists, because the most dangerous situation for engineers is, that their inventions and tools are used to surpress people and take things from the weak to the favour of the strong. History has shown over and over how bad that can be. Much to often has that happened, because the technicians are not interested very much in what their work is used for, saying they just solve problems.

So I'm glad, that the one or other OSE afficionado like you may stumble over this thread and start to think a bit outside of welding and cutting. Most will be get bored, like you, because we don't discuss tools and machinery, but some may be intrigued, and participate in a discussion which has nothing to do with oily hands, but a lot with the future of our society. And as I see, this actually happens.